United Airlines strikes out

And here you thought bad airline food — or more likely no airline food — was the worst thing about flying these days, right?

Cellphone video of a Louisville doctor being dragged off a United Airlines flight Sunday, his lip bloodied in the process, makes most of the usual airline horror stories pale by comparison. It certainly gave new meaning to the notion of being “bumped” from an overbooked flight.

The incident has proven a public relations nightmare for United, which saw its stock take a hit yesterday as the social media ridicule continued unabated.

Part of the problem, of course, was that United CEO Oscar Munoz insisted Monday “our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this.”

Of course, the time to “bump” passengers isn’t once they’ve boarded the plane. So Strike One goes against the airline ground crew for ever creating the situation that proved so contentious. Then it became known that the seats were needed for other United personnel. Strike Two for United management. (Passengers took out their justifiable wrath on those taking the vacated seats, adding to the volatile atmosphere.)

Strike Three? All of this drama caused a three-hour delay on the tarmac. So how did that work to anyone’s benefit?

And while Munoz was defending the indefensible, Chicago’s Aviation Department said the security officer who grabbed the passenger had been placed on leave, noting the incident “was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the department.”

A full 24 hours later, Munoz issued a full-throated apology, saying, “No one should ever be treated this way.”

This was the second public relations disaster for United in as many weeks. Remember the two girls barred from a flight for wearing leggings? (Traveling as United dependents, they were declared in “violation” of its employee dress code.)

Now Munoz says he is committed to “fix what’s broken.”

Maybe they’ll even hand you an extra package of peanuts too.