A video emerges of a man being forcibly removed from his seat because the flight was overbooked.
Videos showing a man being violently removed from a United Airlines flight have provoked a public outcry on social media.
The footage taken from inside the airliner shows a man being violently pulled out of his seat and dragged down the aisle as passengers prepared to take off from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday evening.
The airline in question – United – has acknowledged that the man’s only apparent crime was that the flight was overbooked and he refused to leave voluntarily.
A 50-second clip on Twitter of the incident has been re-tweeted 16,000 times since it was posted that day.
Jayse D Ansbach , who posted the footage tweeted: “#United overbooked and wanted four of us to volunteer to give up our seats for personnel that needed to be at work the next day. ”
“No one volunteered, so United decided to choose for us. They chose an Asian doctor and his wife. ”
“The doctor needed to work at the hospital the next day, so he refused to volunteer,” Mr Ansbach added.
“Ten minutes later, the doctor runs back into the plane with a bloody face, clings to a post in the back, chanting, “I need to go home. ”
Another passenger Audra D. Bridges , who posted a video of the incident on Facebook, that has been viewed over 400,000 times, wrote: “Please share this video. We are on this flight. United airlines overbooked the flight. ”
“They randomly selected people to kick off so their standby crew could have a seat.
“This man is a doctor and has to be at the hospital in the morning,” she added.
“He did not want to get off. We are all shaky and so disgusted. ”
Thousands of Facebook comments have been posted about what happened.
One person wrote : “This is infuriating”
Another posted : “OMG So sad to see someone being treated like this. I wont fly United ever again. ”
But another felt the video raised some unanswered questions.
“There has to be more to this story,” he said.
“Usually when a flight is overbooked they offer free flight vouchers to those willing to change flights or go on standby and a couple of people will jump at those as their travel plans may be flexible. ”
“I feel like this specific incident HAS to be deeper than what we are seeing in this video,” he added.
In a statement United airlines told the BBC: “Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked. ”
“After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate,” the airline added.
By Rozina Sini, BBC’s UGC and Social News team
