{"id":97837,"date":"2017-04-10T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T02:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=97837"},"modified":"2017-04-10T22:37:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T02:37:03","slug":"video-of-passenger-getting-dragged-off-flight-sparks-uproar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/04\/10\/video-of-passenger-getting-dragged-off-flight-sparks-uproar\/","title":{"rendered":"Video of passenger getting dragged off flight sparks uproar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"As<\/a>
As the flight waited to depart from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, officers could be seen grabbing the screaming man from a window seat, pulling him across the armrest and dragging him down the aisle by his arms. (Photo: Li DAVID\/ Youtube<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CHICAGO \u2013Video of police officers dragging a passenger from an overbooked\u00a0United\u00a0Airlines\u00a0flight sparked an uproar Monday on social media, but\u00a0United’s CEO defended his employees, saying they followed proper procedures and had no choice but to call authorities and remove the man.<\/p>\n

As the flight waited to depart from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, officers could be seen grabbing the screaming man from a window seat, pulling him across the armrest and dragging him down the aisle by his arms.\u00a0United\u00a0was trying to make room for four employees of a partner airline on the Sunday evening flight to Louisville, Kentucky.<\/p>\n

Other passengers on Sunday night’s\u00a0United\u00a0Express Flight 3411 are heard saying, \u201cPlease, my God,\u201d \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d \u201cThis is wrong,\u201d \u201cLook at what you did to him\u201d and \u201cBusted his lip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passenger Audra D. Bridges posted the video on Facebook. Her husband, Tyler Bridges, said\u00a0United\u00a0offered $400 and then $800 vouchers and a hotel stay for volunteers to give up their seats. When no one volunteered, a\u00a0United\u00a0manager came on the plane and announced that passengers would be chosen at random.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe almost felt like we were being taken hostage,\u201d Tyler Bridges said. \u201cWe were stuck there. You can’t do anything as a traveller. You’re relying on the airline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oscar Munoz, CEO of\u00a0United\u00a0Airlines’ parent company, apologized first in a written statement and then in a letter to employees Monday evening.<\/p>\n

Munoz said he was \u201cupset to see and hear about what happened\u201d at O’Hare. He added, however, that the man dragged off the plane had ignored requests by crew members to leave and became \u201cdisruptive and belligerent,\u201d making it necessary to call airport police.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this,\u201d Munoz told employees. \u201cWhile I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Munoz said that the airline might learn from the experience, and it was continuing to look into the incident.<\/p>\n

The flight was operated for\u00a0United\u00a0by Republic Airline, which\u00a0United\u00a0hires to fly\u00a0United\u00a0Express flights. Munoz said four Republic employees approached\u00a0United’s gate agents after the plane was fully loaded and said they needed to board. He said the airline asked for volunteers to give up their seats, and then moved to involuntary bumping, offering up to $1,000 in compensation.<\/p>\n

The passenger who refused to leave told the manager that he was a doctor who needed to see patients in the morning, Tyler Bridges said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was kind of saying that he was being singled out because he’s a Chinese man\u201d when speaking to the manager, who was African-American, Bridges said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should know what this is like,\u201d the man said, according to Bridges.<\/p>\n

The AP was unable to confirm the passenger’s identity.<\/p>\n

Two officers tried to reason with the man before a third came aboard and pointed at the man \u201cbasically saying, ‘Sir, you have to get off the plane,\u201d’ Bridges said. That’s when the altercation happened.<\/p>\n

One officer involved has been placed on leave, the Chicago Aviation Department said.<\/p>\n

After the passenger was removed, the four airline employees boarded the plane.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople on the plane were letting them have it,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cThey were saying, ‘You should be ashamed to work for this company.\u201d’<\/p>\n

A few minutes after the employees boarded, the man who was removed returned, looking dazed and saying he had to get home, Bridges said.<\/p>\n

In a video, the man can be seen standing in the aisle near what appears to be the rear of the aircraft. Blood is on his mouth, chin and cheek as he said, \u201cI want to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officers followed him to the back of the plane. Another man travelling with high school students stood up at that point and said they were getting off the plane, Bridges said.<\/p>\n

About half of the passengers followed before\u00a0United\u00a0told everyone to get off, he said.<\/p>\n

The man who was originally dragged down the aisle was removed from the plane again, and\u00a0United\u00a0employees made an announcement saying they had to \u201ctidy up\u201d the aircraft, Bridges said.<\/p>\n

Bridges’ wife told him she saw the man taken away on a stretcher, he said.<\/p>\n

After a three-hour delay the flight took off without the man aboard, Bridges said. A\u00a0United\u00a0employee apologized to passengers, he said.<\/p>\n

Airlines\u00a0are allowed to sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane, and they routinely overbook flights because some people do not show up.<\/p>\n

It’s not unusual for\u00a0airlines\u00a0to offer travel vouchers to encourage people to give up their seats, and there are no rules for the process. When an airline demands that a passenger give up a seat, the airline is required to pay compensation of double the passenger’s one-way fare, up to $675, if the passenger can be placed on another flight that arrives one to two hours later than the first flight, or four times the ticket price, up to $1,350, for longer delays.<\/p>\n

When they bump passengers,\u00a0airlines\u00a0are required to give those passengers a written description of their compensation rights.<\/p>\n

United\u00a0spokesman Charles Hobart declined to say how the airline compensated the passengers who were forced to leave the plane, saying he did not have those details from employees on the scene.<\/p>\n

Bridges said\u00a0United\u00a0should not have boarded the flight if it was overbooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe man handled it wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cThe police were kind of put in a bad spot. There’s a lot of ways\u00a0United\u00a0could have handled it, and that was not one of the good ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2013Video of police officers dragging a passenger from an overbooked\u00a0United\u00a0Airlines\u00a0flight sparked an uproar Monday on social media, but\u00a0United’s CEO …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":97838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,17],"tags":[17803,17801,17691,17802],"class_list":["post-97837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-w","tag-chicagos-ohare-airport","tag-overbooked-flight","tag-passenger","tag-united-airlines","mauthors-caryn-rousseau","mauthors-david-koenig","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}