Thirty passengers bumped off Easyjet flight from Glasgow to Luton

Easyjet has apologised after 30 passengers were turned away from a flight that then took off with two empty seats.

A technical issue meant that the airline had to switch the Glasgow to Luton flight to a smaller aircraft, which meant a number of people had to be bumped off the service for a later one.

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In these situations, the procedure normally goes that volunteers are selected with compensation in some form to travel on a later flight.

One traveller, Joe Bond, however, said he was in a group of 12 people, who arrived an hour before take off, who heard their names called over the tannoy as they had been selected not to fly on Sunday afternoon.

According to the Independent, Joe said: "As the queue formed, my name, and those of my girlfriend, cousin and a few other people, were announced on the public address system and told that the plane had been downgraded and we would not be allowed to board.

"The rest of my family was in the queue and many people looked on at us bewildered. We were told they couldn't let us know earlier because of the way we had checked in, and that the way we had checked in was the reason we had been selected."

He added: "At no time were we or anyone else asked to volunteer to take a later flight. On the plane my stepfather spoke to other passengers who said they were unaware that anyone else had been asked to volunteer their seats."

However, speaking to The Sun, an Easyjet spokesman said: "We asked for volunteers to offload at bag drop and at the gate in return for compensation.

"We provided passengers who didn't travel with alternative flights to London on the same day and we will be providing them with compensation of €250 each.

"We are investigating why the aircraft departed with two empty seats as this should not have happened and we'll look to put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.

"Easyjet would like to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused."