Man Dragged Off Overbooked United Airlines Flight For Not Giving Up His Seat
Passenger is left bleeding after assault by security
First, they came for the leggings, and we said, “Man, what the hell?” Then they started dragging us off planes and we said, “I would like to rebook on another airline, please and thank you.”
United Airlines, a company that has never regretted their tagline line “Come Fly The Friendly Skies” more, is in hot water today after a Facebook video showed security members assaulting a passenger and then dragging him down the aisle of one of their flights.
Last night, United passenger Audra D. Bridges posted a video from her seat on flight 3411, going from Chicago to Louisville. According to Bridges, United asked for four volunteers on the overbooked flight to give up their seats for crew members who were scheduled to be on a Louisville flight the next day. Her companion, Tyler Bridges, told the Washington Post that “an airline supervisor walked onto the plane and brusquely announced, ‘We have United employees that have to fly to Lousiville tonight…This flight’s not leaving until four people get off.'”
Well, blow me down. Once you overbook a flight and don’t have room for your employees, I classify it as your f***king problem. United, however, did not see it that way.
They offered passengers an $800 voucher and a hotel room, but no one volunteered. Finally, a manager came on board and told passengers that their computer was going to randomly pick seats, and those people would be asked to leave the plane. The first couple picked left without incident. Then the computer picked the seat of the man in the video, a doctor who needed to be in Louisville the next day to see patients. He refused to leave and became upset, saying that he was going to call his lawyer. The crew called security, who spoke to him briefly before grabbing him and pulling him out of his seat as he screamed. He is then seen on the video being dragged up the aisle by his arms, bleeding from his mouth and either unconscious or disoriented.
Passengers were horrified. Just watching the video is terrifying — you hear cries of shock and disgust, and one passenger says, “What are you doing?! No, this is wrong.”
But it didn’t end there.
Not long after he was removed, the man returned to the flight and was recorded running down the aisle, bleeding from his mouth and saying, “I have to go home, I have to go home” before grabbing onto a curtain at the back of the plane and mumbling what sounds like, “Don’t kill me. don’t kill me.”
All passengers were removed from the plane and weren’t allowed back on until the man taken off again, this time on a stretcher. The flight ended up arriving in Lousiville three hours late.
Bridges’ video has now been seen over 2.4 million times and is the number one trending story on Twitter, where the incident has received the moral outrage and outraged hilarity that only Twitter can provide:
United then tweeted out a statement…
…which Twitter did not accept:
Sorry, United. You’re pretty well and completely screwed.
