United Overbooked A Flight And They Handled It With Class AKA Dragging A Doctor Out Like A Sack Of Shit While He Screamed Like A Banshee

CBS DFW – According to reports, the [United 3411] Chicago to Louisville flight was oversold and several passengers were chosen at random to be bumped from the flight, including the man and his wife.

Passenger Jayse Anspach tweeted video of the incident that took place Sunday night.

Anspach said that security pulled the doctor from his chair after he refused to leave the plane.

“The doctor needed to work at the hospital the next day, so he refused to ‘volunteer,’ United decided to use force on doctor” said Anspach.

To their credit, United seemed very apologetic:

A United spokesperson confirmed in an email Sunday night that a passenger had been taken off a flight in Chicago.

“Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked,” the spokesperson said. “After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate.

This is long before many of us were alive but there was a time where flying around the country was like being royalty. You check in to a flight with a (relatively) painless security experience, high quality servicepeople keep you up to date on potential issues and cater to you with complimentary foods and drinks, you’re practically a Saudi prince soaring across the skies like a bird. And somewhere along the way costs got higher, gas prices went up, 9/11 happened and airlines collectively went “You know what? These motherfuckers have to fly anyway, let’s treat them like cattle.” When traveling last week I waited around for a flight for 13 hours after it got bumped back ten times with no explanation, basically drowned myself in airport sushi and beer to the tune of $300 bucks, and while I was mostly sedated/bloated into a coma by then, by the time the plane boarded at 3AM it was practically a riot at the gate. Poor people just trying to get to Orlando with squealing children hanging onto their sanity by a thread because they had zero clue what was going on. Things happen — that’s the tradeoff for the miracle of flight instead of taking a horse and buggy across the country and catching dysentery — but somewhere along the way they completely ditched any pretense of giving a fuck and you’ve got sad videos like this that feel like a human rights issue.

Plus is there any worse of a look for an airline than dragging a DOCTOR ABOUT TO VOLUNTEER AT A HOSPITAL off a flight? A random overbooking draw is random and I’m sure before the camera went off this dude wasn’t a peach to deal with…but I don’t know how you can be anything but that horrified white lady in the first video. His lil belly jutting out as they sadly grab his doughy mass out the plane, even if he’s the equivalent of a child being dragged out for throwing a tantrum in a toy store, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic here. He could have been flying to stomp on kitten skulls and I would have been like “oooh come on, he deserves better than this.” But going to a hospital to save life? Bulletproof 100x sympathy cover, like drawing a bomb ass community chest card in Monopoly. United’s gonna have to…probably do absolutely nothing as this has zero effect on their business. Let’s be real. But still. Sad!