Sheesh! I'm surprised by the push-back to the catchy title. I thought the DDF community was a little more savvy about the "world out there".
A bland title like "three children in Madrid were legally but not wisely denied boarding to a flight due to overbooking" will never catch interest. The whole point of the title is to lure you into reading the rest of the article!
Dan, you need to write the title with your target audience in mind and in this case your target is not yankel from boro-park. Your target audience are the writers from major news and social media websites that are supposed to "pick up" the story and run with it. That's way you should use a title that those people will click on even if your regular audience don't get it and would prefer something more bland or haimesh.