Video of United Airlines passenger dragged off plane fuels outrage in China
Shocking images of a bloodied passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago are sparking outrage overseas.
Video of the Sunday incident, in which some witnesses said they thought the man was targeted because he was Asian, was posted on China's microblogging site Weibo. It soon went viral with a reported 210 million views.
The man, who said he was a physician, was yanked from his seat on United Express Flight 3411 headed to Louisville and dragged toward the front of the plane by security officials amid shouts and pleas from fellow passengers.
“Rubbish!” writer Su Danqing posted on Weibo, which is akin to Twitter. “When they were treating this Asian man, they never thought of human rights, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it that way.”
“Damn it! This airline must be boycotted!” said a posting from Liu Bing, a telecommunications company worker.
"No matter what the skin .... people should not be treated like this ... it is arrogant and rude," another user wrote.
One person on Weibo made a nod to another PR furor for United when two young girls in leggings were forced to change clothes before boarding a flight in March: "In fact, not the first time United ... forced the passengers disembark."
The passenger removed from the flight has been identified as David Dao and attended medical school in Vietnam in the 1970s, according to a source with direct knowledge of the passenger's identity. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident.
Four crew members needed seats on Flight 3411 because they had to get to Louisville for another flight, United spokeswoman Erin Benson said, and if they didn't, a "domino effect" could cause a ripple of cancellations.
United offered passengers up to $800 in compensation if they agreed to take a different plane to Louisville, but the offer did not draw enough takers.
United apologized for the incident, but the reverberations continued to quake Tuesday after the airline's CEO sent a letter to employees calling the flier "belligerent" and saluting the actions taken Sunday night. Chicago aviation officials placed a security officer on leave after the incident.
United says it operates more non-stop U.S.-China flights to more cities in China than any other airline, the Associated Press reported.
Contributing: Morgan Watkins, Louisville Courier-Journal; John Bacon, USA TODAY; the Associated Press
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