What has race got to do with it? He is a paying passenger. And he was NOT wearing leggings!

All I can say, after 40 years in the professional aviation business, is that I'm appalled by these UA thugs.
The man bought a ticket, paid for up front. As far as I can see, it's a legally binding contract. He saw his need to be on that particular flight as greater than that of the airline staff, who could have used other means. For him to be assaulted in that way was totally uncalled for.

United Airlines? They can stuff it.

It was a short flight. For the amount of money they were going to have to offer to the offloaded PAX why wouldn't the airline just charter a small jet and move the crew that way?

What's the significance of him being Asian, 69 and male?

If he was white, female and 25 would that make a difference?

'How was work, honey?'

'Same old same old: just beat the crap out of some old foreign guy who wanted to go to work.'

Looking at what we know at the moment, the jury is still out on a number of assumptions you have made. For instance the Department of Transport rules say:



Equally:

What marks this case out is that the pax was already on the plane and had a seat. So he was being forceably removed to accommodate someone else.
UA is going to have to provide some really strong reasons, in accordance with the policy, the DoT mandatorily requires, to justify their action.


We all wait with baited breath to hear their justification.

Yup, let's be clear what happened. United made a simple financial trade off that they could do under the law, rather than raise the price to a point where there would be takers.

The police were called because the passenger refused to leave. The pax doesn't have some absolute right to remain on private property. Thisis UA's property, if you're booted out of someone's business and refuse, do you honestly think management is just going to say, ok, you can stay.

It's not as salacious as you make it out to be, a DH crew needed to be on the plane. Moving crews, causing pax to be bumped is a daily occurrence. You may not like it, but that's business.

But they invited him onto their 'property' in the first place.

It would be interesting to see if airline such as UA were regularly off-loading passengers.

West Coast - clearly it is business. Wiki Gerald Ratner. :)

Waiting for proof from UAL that a crew was being re-positioned, and not just a commuting crew that were being accommodated by their co-workers.

Yes. I can envisage a sensible solution where you do just that and look for another solution. Sometimes the "red mist" or " I must show you who is the boss" is provoked to the forefront and the result deteriorates into something like this. There are times when you lose the battle to win the war. In a customer focused business this often happens.

That has zero to do with this situation. The company made a business decision, sucks for the pax, sucks from a PR perspective, but it isn't a matter that what happened was wrong. The only one in the wrong was the pax.

Name one thing from a legality perspective UA did wrong.

That would be the total melt-down for UA PR.

Well, lets see. For an airline to have any business at all pax must be willing to pay fares.
If an airline send a message that us fare paying passengers are just scum to be beaten up for their corporate convenience then that makes our fare buying decisions easy when considering where to spend our money.

You're mixing elements. This is about legality. UA will take its lumps from a PR pov, what they did from outward appearance isn't a legality one. The pax is the one who should be worrying about that, not UA.

West Coast, please be so kind as mention which airline you work for.

Hitchens has it spot on. But PR boo-boos are UA's standard fare. This organisation are probably run by gifted people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Here is another classic. They fail to realise that it is cheaper to cough up what appears large sums of cash on the day rather than exorbitant amounts later on. This will only cost a few million. If the powers that be took their hands out of their trousers and considered real life they might save themselves millions in the long run. Serves them right.

This 'doctor' doesn't appear to be mentally stable as he races down the aisle after reboarding the plane and chants 'I have to go home, I have to go home':

https://twitter.com/Tyler_Bridges/st...28695360663552

Well, I'm ex Army, RAF and airline captain with a couple of police officers in my extended family and, if as reported, this was a disgraceful assault on a legitimate passenger who had legally boarded the aircraft and was not behaving in a disruptive manner.
I do wish I was in his legal shoes in the USA right now :E

Airbubba, I would imagine that being smacked in the mouth and dragged off an aircraft by thugs would upset many people.