Interestingly, the SPIEGEl doesn't mention the police intervention and claims that upon a quarrel between a flight attendant and a male passenger the captain ordered 120 passengers out (threw them out of the plane) and than took of with a considerably empty plane. The passengers in the plane state that the action was out of proportion. Now, the Spiegel is pretty reliable and up to good journalism so there seems to be some disconnect between the english and the German reporting.