They forced him out of his seat because they needed the room for some United employees. It is a 4-hour and 35-minute drive from Chicago to Louisville. They could have put their employees in a taxi or even another airline instead of forcing a paying passenger off the plane by force. The sad thing is that people are defending this, saying that he was on private property. Doesn't work that way. If someone pays for the right to be on that property, you can't simply renege on the agreement. What they should have done is kept on upping the ante until someone else volunteered. You know, let the market decide. I would have swapped for $1000, a first class hotel room and a first class ticket for the next flight. Pennies for an airline. Now they have a massive PR nightmare and it is going to cost them much more than the amount they should have paid to begin with. Idiots.

I can remember when air travel was an elegant luxury. Men wore a suit and the and women were also nicely attired. There was only single class service and drinks were free. Oh, and the airplanes had propellers. Sigh, today the bus is more comfortable.

Makes me love my car even more;^)
This also helped me decide to cancel my United credit card today and save the $95 annual fee.
I'm so glad I do not have to fly for business often now. Air travel has been turned to torture by regulations and corporate stupidity.

I doubt they can have 'small private jets' available at all the airports in case they have a full flight and no one gets off. I believe they offered a hotel night and $400, then upped it to $800 before resorting to random selection.

While it's certainly not great for customer service, you don't own your seat. If they ask you to get off the airplane you have to do it, getting into a physical battle to keep 'your' seat does not reflect well on your judgement.

amazing to me that united is the largest airline in the country even though it is recognized as the worst airline in the country. I was once flying from Alaska back home with a first class ticket and when I was on almost the last leg they refuse to recognize my ticket and wanted me in coach. I said remove my baggage iif I am not on the plane in first class. no telling how many people missed their connecting flights. when I wrote to the president their customer relations guy sent me a voucher for 150 bucks, I sent it back stating I would never fly united again. they would have called the police if I had tried to hold my ground and I chose not to go that direction. the problem with united is that they are a union shop and when they took over continental who is not ALL of the continental people hated it.

I, anymore, try to avoid taking my family on a jet liner. I don't want them to suffer the humiliation of all the x-ray machines, enhanced pat-downs, etc. They've done nothing wrong and aren't a threat. So, it pains me to have to explain stuff like that to my kids. I know that may sound strange and at this point I'm probably in a bubble of denial about the whole thing. This looks like another reason I hadn't thought of.

Anymore, they really search me when I fly. They see parts of me that only my wife gets to see. Ever wonder about that?...those videos that go viral of them feeling a little kid's crotch over and over? I see that and my mind automatically says, "What's really going on here? It's obvious after the xray and first touchy-feely that there's no weapon in the kid's skivvies. But the groping continues. It's not security. It's something else." Makes me sad for the kids...

How To Ruin Your Business 101
Treat customers like crap. Praise employees who do that.
How To Ruin Your Business 102
Have police drag away customers who complain about being treated like crap.
How To Ruin Your Business 103
Legally renege on paid-for customer expectations.
This more advanced course reveals that saying the law on your side does not solve the PR problem of screwing over
paying customers and having police brutalize them when they do not comply with the said screwing over.

That was horrible! I can't imagine how I would have felt being on the plane and witnessing this. OMG!

They may have boarded all the stand bys and came up over by one. We do not know if the Doc was pre booked or was put on a stand by list. If he was stand by he would be one of the first to be asked to get off. Notice the people yelling about his removal do not themselves volunteer to take his place.

Just found this on new feed: http://www.khou.com/money/business/un...

Flight not overbooked. Has a bit more of the information complied.

Bad business, but who owns the plane? I think we support United's right to make this decision and perhaps enforce it.

Was it remotely wise? Not a chance.

Should United be punished? They will...they will, but not by government.

this was a tragedy of errors...in my 25 years career as an airline pilot, i had to have passengers removed from the airplane before flight...it cost me about 90 days of paperwork and that was the end of it...you did not want to be trapped in a silver tube with an unhappy passenger....

when the gate agent start bidding to remove passengers from an overbooked flight...the price continues to go up until there are enough volunteers...ALL volunteers get the final price...why they went to a computer selection is beyond me...maybe a change in procedures at United...it is not that way at American...

Now I'm thinking. What other type of business would get away with treating their customers that way? I'll have to mull that over. Ice cream shop? No. Car dealership? Nope. CPA? Not likely. My mind thinks in strange ways. Probably all the football. Cruise ship? No. Movie theater? Not even when we were kids. With air travel there is this relatively new paradigm of giving up your basic rights, huh? Let's hope the businesses I mention here don't contemplate that business model. Haha....

Correct me, if I'm wrong, but if an airline official says I must vacate my seat (for whatever reason)...I must vacate it. The last thing I would do is require them to drag me, kicking and screaming, from the plane.

I'm not entirely sure this passenger really did the right thing. Wouldn't it have made more sense to submit a formal complaint? Airlines, generally, try to pacify inconvenienced passengers, but maybe they've changed in the half dozen years since I last flew.

The You Tube commercial is hilarious. I remember the day when an airline would find a flight for you on another airline if you missed a connection or they couldn't honor your ticket - at no additional cost to you. I too remember the day when men wore suits. I too remember a flight where the snack was stone crab meat. And I remember when one didn't have to pay extra for leg room. But United isn't alone. My wife just lived through Delta Hell experiencing the effects of the new CEO. Their screw ups cost her thousands of dollars of lost income. I imagine a class action lawsuit will follow.

It's unclear if that flight was really overbooked or the excuse United cited when it decided to send four employees to Louisville. Did United actually 'ask' for volunteers before it randomly chose four passengers? In business the paying customer comes first; the adage; 'The customer (thinks he or she) is always right' seems to have been lost on United's management. From the video without sound one would think the person being removed was a terrorist! Any scenario played out does not bode well for the airline. Perhaps the only skilled surgeon able to save the life of a patient who then dies, a broker with a priority business deal which costs investors millions of dollars, a person with an appointment as in 'Love Affair' or 'An Affair to Remember'? Other people have commitments and make arrangements for travel etc. based on expecting to be at a certain place at a certain time. It is clear that United not only provides poor customer service but does not deploy its resources wisely or efficienty, i.e. poor management decisions and poorer public relations.

The horrible customer service aspect aside - I can't help wonder why a passenger would resist like this with 3 or 4 law enforcement personnel showing up to remove you. They are clearly not there to negotiate. Even with possible communication/language issues the passenger seems pretty disconnected from reality.

Of course, this is why it makes the news - there is nothing about the other 3 passengers forced off from the same flight.

The video of the passenger returning to the flight (how/why did that happen?!) also shows odd behavior and appearance.
None of this any excuse for the business practice, of course. One issue with this practice is when you bring government officials on board to enforce part of your "service" you are losing a lot of control.

This 45 second video will leave you laughing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4muxx...

I heard someone say "At United Airlines we beat our competitors prices and pass the beatings on to you". This is a natural progression of events when you give people too much power.

There's a really simple market-oriented way to solve this problem: boycott United until they change their policies about overbooking. I guarantee that if passengers rebooked their flights with other airlines for the next two weeks United would be jumping up and down about how they had changed their policies.

But with all due respect to United, once a passenger is seated, I'm sorry but you have already committed to service that person. You can refuse to seat them in the first place, but that's it.

Well, that's the new paradigm. Screaming. Force. Looks like a busted nose, too. Good bless America!

Sounds like a few of the people are still shocked by this. This man might be fairly new to America, possibly not understanding the deal so eloquently pointed out here by others. Too bad for him, if so. Welcome to America.

Something to keep in mind: Given union rules, no airline can just shove its employees into a taxi or some other conveyance at whim, as an alternative to bumping paid passengers for the same purpose.

I'm not going to argue in favor of police breaking someone's nose and knocking his teeth out, but I - and nobody else here - witnessed what Dao did at the outset of the forced removal.

What is directly perceivable in the video of the incident is that Dao began screaming like a wild animal from the moment the police moved toward him with the intent to physically remove him. It's uncertain whether he started screaming before they even touched him, but rational people do not refuse clearly-stated instructions from police, much less begin screaming like stuck pigs and expect the police to say, in effect "Oh, well we've clearly upset the man, maybe we should just leave him alone and go home now." We do not know whether Dao physically resisted the cops - which would be a criminal act in itself - but that too is a possibility that would definitely contribute to the level of force the cops used.

I'm not a big fan of conservatism or of the National Review, but they published a piece on the 11th that makes some good points about reasonable vs. unreasonable actions, by Dao, United and the cops alike. And no, even if you've bought a ticket, you do not own the plane and you do not own the airline. In the case of claiming breach of contract for being removed from a flight solely for the airline's convenience, civilized people take the issue to court, after-the-fact. There is no such thing as a "right" to refuse or to physically fight against armed police and to expect them not to respond in kind:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article...
.

We only travel by RV now since we retired because flying in a cramped plane and going through long lines and TSA is just not for us.

One look at the face of United's president, and you see how much he cares about customer service. Customers are just hacks to him.

I have noticed an increase in a resort to violence of late in even common situations where the violence is totally unneeded; everything from a 2 person encounter in a bar parking lot to a business using force on a customer. While the passengers in this situation seemed to protest, in other situations, I have seen them be relieved that someone took care of the situation. In some cases, the use of force is justified, but not in this case. The legitimate passenger was not causing any problems except to expect the airline to fulfill its contract. I'd love to represent this fellow in the coming lawsuit, and I'm not even a lawyer.