Introduction

Chicago O’Hare Airport, 1740 hrs, 9th April 2017

Boarded and fully booked, United Express Flight 3411 to Louisville, Kentucky, operated by Republic Airways on behalf of the United Airlines subsidiary, was at its gate ready for departure. A sky bully came on board the Embraer 170 jet and said four passengers had to give up their seats. The airline wanted these for its own staff. There were no volunteers, even when a first offer of $400 compensation was raised to $800.

In the end, four passengers were selected by computer to be bumped. Three complied, but the fourth, Dr David Dao – a 69-year-old doctor who was flying back to Kentucky to see patients the following morning – was unwilling to give up his seat. So, instead, he was wrestled from it by three baseball-capped operatives. Dragged unconscious along the aisle, his nose and two of his teeth broken, blood trickling down his face, the doctor was taken off the aircraft. Fellow passengers filmed this malevolent scene on their mobile phones. Videos would go viral on YouTube, although not before Dr Dao had managed to re-board the aircraft. This time, the wounded, concussed and evidently distraught medic was dispatched on a stretcher.

Airline staff took their hard-won seats. Flight 3411 departed O’Hare two hours late. A later press statement claimed that the airline had simply been ‘re-accommodating’ passengers, and a leaked internal email said that employees had ‘followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this’. Who could think of criticizing United’s Oscar Munoz, the very model of a modern airline CEO, with years of experience working for AT&T, Coca-Cola and Pepsi? The previous month,PRWeek magazine had named him its ‘Communicator of the Year’. He held an MBA degree from Pepperdine University, a devoutly Christian college near Malibu, California.

The following month, United flew more passengers than it had a year earlier. It posted significant gains in passenger miles flown, and recorded the fewest cancellations in its history. The airline’s share price hit an all-time high. Warren Buffett, the veteran business magnate and a major investor in airline stocks, toldFortune that although United had made a ‘terrible mistake’ over the Dao affair, the public wanted cheap seats. This meant ‘high-load factors’ and, for passengers, a ‘fair amount of discomfort’.

A gun barrel of online US commentators said, in no uncertain terms, that Dr Dao deserved every injury and humiliation that came his way. How dare he delay other passengers and obstruct an all-American corporation going about its lawful business? As for the assault on the doctor, one of his three assailants, the aviation security officer James Long, felt he had been unfairly dismissed as a result of attempts by United Airlines to placate those Americans, including President Donald Trump, who said its methods had been wrong.

Long took legal action against United Airlines and Chicago’s Department of Aviation, claiming that he had not been trained properly in the handling of out-of-line passengers. How was he to know that violence against them was inappropriate and that, in this case, he wasn’t following ‘established procedures’?

‘Drive,’ commented one online reader in response to CNN’s coverage of the story, ‘and, if you cannot, then consider flying in a cramped seat with surly airline employees treating you like animal-cargo.’

When anyone complains, they are reminded – whether by