An easyJet passenger claims he and his fellow travellers organised a whip-round to pay compensation for four people forced off an overweight flight.
Engineer Simon Lay boarded the 7.05am flight to Geneva on Thursday but found himself still on the tarmac and hour-and-a-half later after the plane was deemed 300kg overweight.
Eventually it was decided four people would have to be persuaded to disembark before the flight could leave.
He claims travellers at the front of the plane stumped up an extra £100 for each man, and that the rest of the passengers then held a further whip-round to compensate THEM for their generosity.
The 40-year-old said: "The whip-round certainly happened, I put two quid in. I saw other people throwing in fivers.
“It is ridiculous and embarrassing for easyJet."
A spokesman for the airline confirmed to Huffington Post UK the plane had been overweight due to an "exceptionally high proportion of male passengers".
But he added: "We are not aware of any other arrangements between passengers and we have no evidence anything of the sort took place."
The four passengers who disembarked the plane caught a later flight from Birmingham that same day.