The biggest story of this past Holy Week was not about the United States using its biggest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan. It was not North Korea threatening to attack South Korea if provoked by the US. The “Big Story” did not have anything to do with religion. It was about a 69-year-old man beaten and removed from an airplane for refusing to “volunteer” to give up his seat when the airline needed that seat to transport its own crew to another city.
On April 9—Palm Sunday—Dr. David Dao was forcibly removed from United Airlines Flight 3411 by Chicago airport police, suffering multiple injuries and a concussion. After asking for volunteers to make room for another flight crew to board in order to get to the destination city, the airline randomly selected “volunteers” to take another flight. Dao refused and the police were called, because he was being “uncooperative” and “belligerent”.
Adding insult to injury—literally—United Airlines did not remove Dao’s luggage from the flight when he was forcibly removed.
Of course, when everyone is carrying a smartphone camera and ready for action, multiple videos were almost immediately uploaded to the Internet, virtually sparking a global outrage. Although apparently born in Vietnam, social and mainstream media in China considered this a racial issue against all Asians, which tells much about the modern world and new alliances.
Almost 500 million Chinese reacted to the story on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging web site. Dao’s past—a convicted felon who traded prescription drugs for secret sex with a patient—added another twist to the story in this age of online information.
Another interesting piece of information is that it was not actually a United Airlines flight. While United will bear the public-relations nightmare and legal obligation arising from this incident, it actually occurred on another company’s airplane crewed by the staff of a smaller carrier, Republic Airways, operating under the United Airlines banner.
The arrogance and disrespect of the ordinary citizen manifested in this event is, in part, the result of the unholy alliance between business cartels and government. What the airline did—forcing a passenger to “volunteer” to give up a paid-for seat is legal.
The US Department of Transportation said in a statement: “It is legal for airlines to [involuntarily] bump passengers from an oversold flight when there are not enough volunteers, it is the airline’s responsibility to determine its own fair boarding priorities”. Oddly enough, this incident would not have happened in the “backward, oligarch-controlled” nation of the Philippines.
The Air Passenger Bill of Rights passed into law in 2012 allows airlines to overbook and ask for volunteers to be moved to another flight if necessary. However, the airline must increase the compensation for that inconvenience until enough volunteers come forward. This is known as the “auction system”.
Of course, this is an isolated incident, and that is why it is globally front-page news. But it is another “nail in the coffin” of the trust and confidence of the people in government. We are supposed to be protected by the law from the sort of abuse that Dao experienced. United Airlines failed, because the government failed.