Come fly the friendly skies?
Now we know why United Airlines no longer uses this tagline.
A few weeks ago, the Internet erupted in outrage after a company employee banned girls in leggings from boarding a flight.
And now the airline is once again making the wrong kind of news, following the online release of footage that depicts a passenger being violently removed from a seat he paid for in timely, legal and very fair fashion.
Aboard a Louisville-bound flight from Chicago on Sunday, the passenger refused to give up his seat after the airline randomly selected him to do so.
According to Audra Bridges, the woman who shot the disturbing video below, those on board were offered $ 800 to take a later flight in order to make room for United employees heading for work in Kentucky.
When no volunteers emerged, four individuals, including the person featured here, were then chosen at random to give up their seats.
However, the man told officials that he"s a doctor who had patients to see early Monday, the Courier-Journal reports, and that he simply could not afford to change his schedule.
No matter.
Security members boarded the plane and forcibly removed the physician against his will.
“Oh my God! Look at what you did to him,” a woman is hearing yelling in this video, while other passengers look on in horror.
The doctor was eventually permitted to re-board the flight, with Bridges saying he appeared to be bloody and disoriented. A medical crew quickly arrived to treat the passenger.
United spokesman Charlie Hobart told the Chicago Tribune that the flight was overbooked, which isn"t really the issue here.
The issue is more along the lines of… how is an airline legally allowed to oversell a flight and then remove passengers who simply bought a ticket from the plane?
“After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate,” Hobart said.
“We apologize for the overbook situation.”
To date, this video has been viewed over 680,000 times on Facebook.
Check it out for yourself:
