The only down side is the bloody media got a hold of it and made a song and dance about it which amounted to bad publicity.
Over the years, I've heard of a lot of pax being marched off a lot of aircraft by a lot of AFP (some of which made the media) but I hadn't heard of people actually having to be escorted off for this reason. I thought the traditional airline method was to keep upping the incentives until you got a couple of volunteers? Make it a free flight, add an extra night in a nice hotel, throw in dinner etc, etc until someone hops off. Isn't it?
Were there any incentives offered or was it just a too bad so sad? Virgin certainly haven't said that they offered anything as compensation.
As a pax, I wouldn't have been very happy with a too bad so sad; not if I'd got there on time and paid for a proper ticket on Virgin who are trying to assure everyone that they're not a LCC anymore. I don't blame the pilots for doing what had to be done (nor am I an airline pilot so I wouldn't have a clue about their options) but the whole way it was done sounds a bit average.