My two cents worth:
My name is Nathaniel Martin, i am a uni student originally from Hobart now studying at Deakin in Melbourne. I came home for Easter Break. As can clearly be seen, this photo shows i booked a flight from Hobart to Melbourne for Sunday April 7th at 8.05pm. As this also shows the booking date was Monday March 18th. 20 days before the flight. It cost me $78.45. I arrived at Hobart Airport at approximately 7pm, still comfortably 20 minutes before the check in closed for my flight.
That depends on how long you are in the queue for waiting to be checked in.
A approached the gate to purchase extra baggage (had a bit more to take back) i was informed that 1 piece of 17.3kg baggage would cost me $120. Was my fault as i purchased the fee without baggage, but the corresponding price with virgin is $40 so you can make your own mind up about that value. I then received my boarding pass and proceeded to gate 2.
So he had to go to the counter to pay for his excess baggage first prior to being checked in. All this takes time so you'd have to think that by the time he was physically checked in which wasn't until he'd paid for his excess, that this would have been very close to the checkin cut off time of 45 minutes prior to departure.
I don't get the $120.00 charge for TT baggage paying at the airport. Their website states that you can only upsize your luggage at the airport to 15kg worth - it doesn't state what extra charges apply in excess of 15kg.
TT do allow you to add baggage after you have made your booking even if you originally booked with no luggage & charges range from $15.00 for 15kg up to $60.00 for 40kg.
This has to be done at least 72 hours prior to departure which would have been a better option for the OP as I'm sure he would've had an idea then that he would have more than just carry on luggage.
I went to board the plane and was informed that you had oversold my flight (more tickets sold than seats available, which basically equates to fraud) and that i would have to be 'offloaded' and could not board the plane. The reason given was that 'i was the last to check in', even though i had booked the ticket a month in advance and was 15 minutes early to check in.
In my book "15 minutes early to checkin" is not 15 minutes prior to checkin closing. If TT checkin opens 2 hours prior to departure at 6.05pm & you arrived at the airport at 5.50 pm that would be 15 minutes early to checkin.
What I don't 'get' is that if the flight was oversold then they wouldn't have been able to give him a boarding that checkin as there would not have been any seat to allocate to him and therefore no boarding pass to issue.
I can think of a couple of reasons for an oversale but I don't know why TT didn't tell him eg "we're oversold because a seat onboard the aircraft is unserviceable and as it's a full flight there is no other seat to move you to". It may not have been his seat that was u/s but maybe the pax sitting in the u/s seat was moved to his. Generally airlines would bump the last people to checkin if they're looking to flick someone.
Sometimes A320 operators may have to cap the flight at certain amount of pax particularly on long flights eg DRW/MEL or BNE/PER which I've seen but I would think it's extremely unlikely that a short flight such as HBA/MEL would have to cap a flight even if they did take on more fuel for bad wx, holding etc.
I am fairly certain that he would have been the last person to checkin.
The federal police officer of 20 years experience helping my family said it was the 'worst case of customer service he had ever seen' and the flight attemdant told me to 'get them for every cent' but to top it all off as i was paying informed me that it should not have been me that was offloaded off the flight but the person that booked the ticket last. So it was all for nothing. After waiting an additional 35 minutes to get my bag back i finally about to get on jetstar and go to melbourne.
Not sure why AFP would be there assisting people with checkin formalities. I do know that they would be called if pax are displaying disruptive or threatening behaviour such as when they're too late to checkin or are complaining about extra charges but I would think that the airline would tell them that was the reason they're being offloaded not make up a story that they're oversold.
I think there are a few details missing here.
