More than 40 passengers were left stranded at Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG) on Thursday morning after China Eastern Airlines (MU) overbooked flight, CCTV News reported.

Passengers on flight MU564 bound for Beijing received the bad news when they arrived at the airport's Terminal 1 building for check-ins.

The passengers said MU546 left at its scheduled time of 9:30 a.m., leaving behind more than 40 passengers who had valid tickets, because the airline had sold 50 more tickets than the number of available seats..

A representative of China Eastern confirmed the Beijing-bound flight was overbooked due to a temporary aircraft replacement from previous Airbus A330-200 to A330-300. "Since all of you booked the tickets through travel agents, we cannot directly inform you the change."

On Thursday noon, China Eastern released a statement on flight MU564, saying a temporary change in aircraft model caused the flight was overbooked. All stranded passengers were transported to Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (SHA) and took another China Eastern flight to Beijing at 11:00 a.m. The airline will also compensate them.

According to a source familiar with the matter, the original aircraft failed to fly to Shanghai due to the frozen weather hitting most part of China. So the airline then dispatched another aircraft with the same size that unexpectedly had fewer seats.

It is a common practice for airlines to overbook tickets in case some passengers fail to show up at last minute.