well for the passengers of the air berlin flight i can understand their concerns and in the circumstances they did the right thing by switching the a/c. also this gave mx the time to properly trouble shoot and repair the defect.
as for the spanair pax that refused to board, i'm sorry but i have no sympathy for them. if people dont want to fly spanair then they have the right to book another airline but obvious overreaction really helps nobody and proves only the ignorance of the pax that refused to get on the aircraft over something trivial