I doubt that this aircraft was structurally overweight. Past comments suggest that the male/female ratio would have had a negligible affect on the overall weight of the aircraft. The journey itself was less than 1/6th of the maximum range of a fully loaded A319. Six times more fuel would add much more weight to the aircraft than a few extra men with ski's. Airlines don't carry additional fuel for fun (see the numerous threads on the subject knocking about R&N). Why would they offload passengers to carry extra fuel when they could just refuel in GVA? If there were problems with refueling in GVA, the distance GVA-LPL-GVA still amounts to less than half of the aircrafts fully loaded range. Even if they were flying a 'W' pattern there aren't many destinations which are further away from GVA than LPL.
Edit: I'm not too familiar with the implications of the max ZFW, but it seems to me that an aircraft type which is certified to carry cargo should have a much higher maximum ZFW than would be accounted for by bags and passengers alone (even if many of them were carrying ski's) - EZY don't carry cargo so presumably have a higher ceiling in this regard(?). I happily stand to be corrected on this presumption
I would suggest that perhaps they developed some kind of technical fault shortly before departure which reduced their maximum takeoff (or landing) weight (as I alluded to in my earlier post). If this is the case then presumably nobody would have been able to spot that they were overweight until after boarding.
Are there any technical problems which could result in this happening?
EXxB:
Edited to add: their statutory minimum was to provide any passengers denied boarding with €250 (£210) and with a rerouting. They appear to have breached Regulation 261 here.
Unfortunately not. They asked for volunteers to leave the aircraft and people accepted on Easyjets terms. Had they forced people to disembark then they would be entitled to the full amount under Regulation 261. As
Piltdown Man stated, the passengers should have "Kept calm and stayed seated until €250 and a free flight came their way." This seems to have been very badly handled by Easyjet.