The airline also had a couple of choices. They could 1) raise the money offer to all the passengers to voluntarily take a later flight until one passenger took them up on it, or 2) physically remove a passenger at random, knowing full well that videos of the removal of the passenger would be going viral all over social media. It takes a special kind of corporate stupid to make the choice they did.
Leave the plane like a man or be dragged off like a toddler.
1) Be a sheep and do what you're told regardless of how unjustly you feel you're being treated, or 2) resist what you consider to be unjust treatment.
End of story.
This story isn't close to being over. It remains to be seen if the guy forcibly removed will settle for a large payment from United, or whether he'll take the matter to trial and try for an even bigger payout.
I find it difficult to believe there are so many people who side with the perp on the plane instead of the security people just doing their job in an impossible situation.
Again; the perp only had two choices by the time the security people had arrived. Leave standing up like a man or like a baby being dragged. There wasn’t a third choice.
The airline had the authority and right to bump those people for the over all good of keeping the planes in the air moving people from point A to point B. The perp hijacked the plane when he make the decision to stay and be a baby about it.
In a just and honorable world this perp would serve time and have to pay a big fine. I hope it happens that way.
I like option C. He is arrested for hijacking and kidnapping or maybe just for stopping the airline's movement which runs thousands of dollars per minute.
The airline does indeed take him to trial and he ends up paying a huge settlement and in lieu of prison or jail time; he is deported back to his home country.