THE CEO OF the airline at the centre of a controversy, which saw a video of a passenger being forcibly removed from a flight go viral, has apologised for the “upsetting event”.
Oscar Munoz, chief executive of United Airlines, has said sorry for “having to re-accommodate those customers”.
Yesterday’s flight, bound for Louisville, Kentucky from Chicago, saw a number of dramatic videos circulating on social media of an Asian man screaming in distress while being dragged from his seat on the plane.
An administrative error had apparently seen the flight overbooked. With four seats needed to enable United employees to make their shifts on flights the following day, airline employees asked for volunteers to have their tickets re-assigned to another flight.
When no-one made themselves available, the Asian man, understood to be a doctor, was one of those forcibly removed from the plane. He was seen to be bleeding profusely from his face after hitting his head off his chair’s armrest during the incident.
“This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” Munoz’s statement reads.
I apologise for having to re-accommodate these customers.
Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened.
We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation.
The statement from the CEO is marginally less confrontational than a previous missive on the subject from the airline which simply said that when the man refused to volunteer “law enforcement was asked to come to the gate”.
Fellow passengers said on Twitter that the man who was removed was taken from the plane alongside his wife.
It’s understood that he is a doctor who was unwilling to leave the plane as he was due at his hospital for work the next day.
A second video showed him, still bleeding from the previous altercation, somehow managing to re-enter the plane while repeatedly saying “I need to go home”.
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