Friendly skies?
United under fire after dragging passenger off plane
NEW YORK (Reuters) – United Airlines sparked outrage on Monday for the treatment of a passenger who was physically dragged off a plane the airline had overbooked, and one of the security officers involved in the incident was placed on leave pending an investigation.
Videos posted online by other passengers showed a man screaming as officers yanked him from his seat on United Flight 3411 before it departed from Chicago O’Hare International Airport to Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday.
The man, who appeared to be Asian, was seen being dragged down the aisle on his back by his hands, body limp, bleeding from the mouth, glasses askew and shirt pulled up above his navel. The videos sparked outrage on social media, the second time in less than a month that United was criticized for its treatment of passengers.
In a letter circulated to employees and seen by Reuters, United CEO Oscar Munoz did not apologize for the way the passenger was handled, writing that the passenger had “defied” security officers.
Munoz said there were lessons the company could learn from the situation, though he said he “emphatically” stood behind his employees.
“We sought volunteers and then followed our involuntary denial of boarding process (including offering up to $1,000 in compensation),” Munoz wrote. “When we approached one of these passengers to explain apologetically that he was being denied boarding, he raised his voice and refused to comply with crew member instructions.”
United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell nearly 4% on Tuesday after a worldwide backlash erupted against the incident.
The Chicago Department of Aviation said in a statement that one of the officers did not follow protocol and added that he had been placed on leave pending a review for actions not condoned by the department.
The US Department of Transportation said it was reviewing whether United complied with overbook rules that require airlines to set guidelines on how passengers are denied boarding if they do not volunteer to give up their seats.
“While it is legal for airlines to involuntarily bump passengers from an oversold flight when there are not enough volunteers, it is the airline’s responsibility to determine its own fair boarding priorities,” a DOT representative said in a statement.
According to Tyler Bridges, a passenger who was on board the flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky, the man who was dragged off before takeoff said repeatedly that he was being discriminated against because he was Chinese.
“He said, ‘I’m a doctor; I need to see patients,” said Bridges, a civil engineer from Louisville who recorded much of the incident on his phone.
Video of the incident posted to Twitter account @Tyler_Bridges shows three security officers huddling over the seated passenger before dragging him to the floor.
The airline said it had asked for volunteers to leave because additional flight crew needed to get to Louisville.
In the United States, social media outrage continued, with the incident trending on Twitter for the second consecutive day.
Many Twitter users promoted# New United Airlines Mot to, which was atop-trending topic on Tuesday morning. Other trending hash tags were# Con Air and# Boycott UnitedAirlines.
Many social media users criticized United for how it handled the situation.
“Apologize for saying you ‘had to’ do this. There were other options and you know it,” user @TessaDare wrote in a series of posts retweeted thousands of times. “Apologize for creating and allowing a corporate culture that says it’s okay to treat passengers with such disregard and disdain.”
In Bridges’s video, a woman asks: “Can’t they rent a car for the pilots and have them drive?” Two uniformed men then reach into the man’s seat and snatch him from his chair.
Fellow passenger Jayse D. Anspach, who goes by @JayseDavid on Twitter, wrote: “No one volunteered (to leave), so @United decided to choose for us. They chose an Asian doctor and his wife.”
“It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet,” Anspach wrote, “and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll.”
Another video shows the distressed man, still disheveled from the wrangle, returned to the cabin, clinging onto a curtain at the back of the plane and repeating: “Just kill me. Kill me,” and “I have to go home,” as blood streaked down his mouth.
Much of the online uproar surrounded the appropriateness of removing a paying customer in order to accommodate airline staff.
“They bloodied a senior citizen & dragged him off the plane so THEIR OWN STAFF could take his seat,” one Twitter user wrote.
Other social media users questioned whether the man would have been removed as forcefully had he not been Asian.
Outrage also erupted on Chinese social media, with the topic attracting more than 130 million views on its Weibo platform by Tuesday afternoon. Many users focused on comments from a fellow passenger reported in The Washington Post, which said the man dragged off the plane said he was “being selected because I’m Chinese.”
Typical comments also included calls to boycott United, including from high-profile users like comedian Joe Wong and Liu Qiangdong, founder of e-commerce giant JD.com.
“This makes me recall the nightmare experiences I had the three times I flew with United Airlines,” Liu told his more than 3 million followers. “United’s service is definitely the worst in the world!”
Late last month, two teenage girls dressed in leggings were denied boarding on a United flight from Denver to Minneapolis because their form-fitting pants did not conform to the dress code for employees or family members using free passes.