"A man on an overbooked United Airlines flight was forcibly removed from his seat and dragged through the aisle on Sunday..."

"... and video of the anguished protests by him and other passengers spread rapidly on Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics."

That's the NYT report. Here's something in the WaPo report that isn't in the Times:

“He says, ‘Nope. I’m not getting off the flight. I’m a doctor and have to see patients tomorrow morning,’” [said Tyler Bridges, the passenger who made the video, about the man who refused to leave]...

The man became angry as the manager persisted, Bridges said, eventually yelling. “He said, more or less, ‘I’m being selected because I’m Chinese.’”

I can't bring myself to look at the video, but I'm not as sympathetic to this person as most people seem to be. I don't like the bumping of passengers, but if it's going to happen, and if the airline uses some random method to select the ones to bump, I don't see how the chosen person should be allowed to avoid the bad luck by refusing to leave.

Obviously, choosing people by race would be unacceptable, but this man seems to have resorted to that accusation only after his go-to I'm-a-doctor argument failed. That is, at first he argued in favor of discrimination, that he should get a special doctor privilege. That amounts to an argument that people with less important jobs should be discriminated against — class discrimination.

Maybe it would be a good idea for the airline to have a policy of giving doctors a special privilege over other passengers, but if it hasn't, I don't see why the doctor should get a different outcome through civil disobedience tactics, physically resisting. If the airline actually had a race discrimination policy, I would support resistance, but I don't believe that accusation. I think this was someone who, like everybody else who didn't volunteer to leave, wanted to stay on the flight. Should everyone willing to resist get to stay and the burden of the bumping fall on the people who are too polite and unselfish to go into resistance mode? I just don't understand how caving into people like this will work.

And, again, I don't like bumping, but my understanding is that airline fares are kept low by overbooking and bumping when needed. Doesn't everyone know they are exposed to that risk when they buy an airline ticket?

ADDED: This post already had a "hypocrisy" tag (aimed at the doctor), so check me for hypocristy by reading what I wrote back in 2004 about a bumping incident involving my sons:

Boo to American Airlines for demanding that one of my sons get off the plane going from O'Hare to Madison at 9 o'clock at night because the plane was overweight. I know there are real safety concerns about weight and removing one person may make a difference and a little weight really does matter on those small planes, but at 9 o'clock at night, with no later flight to take, couldn't you offer more freebies until you get a volunteer? Two people did volunteer, but American only needed to kick off one person and so it would only offer one of these two the measly $200 travel certificate, and the two volunteers didn't want to split up. So one of my sons had to leave, to get the next bus to Madison, at 11 pm, and arrive at the Memorial Union at 2 am--on a cold night, with no shelter open, and nothing warm to wear, because he hadn't worn a coat in Austin, and his luggage had traveled on the plane.

Many passengers on the plane witnessed how rudely my sons were treated and at least one came up afterwards to say how offended he was and how he was going to write a letter to the airline about it. What I simply cannot understand is: 1. If you are going to do something like this at least be scrupulously polite while you're doing it (instead, the method used was: if you don't leave right now, we'll still make you leave and you won't even get the $200 certificate!) and 2. Try much harder to get volunteers (for a second $200 travel certificate, the two volunteers would have left willingly, and everyone else on the plane would have kept a positive opinion about the airline; instead, many people felt really bad about the airline). By the way, I think I would have volunteered in that situation, because the idea of a small plane at its weight limit scares me. That's another reason why they should go for volunteers: pressuring someone makes everyone feel anxious and subject of the dangerous weight of the plane has got to make for some exquisitely bad feeling aboard!

It's interesting that there were seats for everyone on the plane, but the weight didn't add up right. Do you think in that situation the airline ought to pick on the heaviest passengers? Actually, I don't. Yet if I were in that situation, seeing someone being pressured off the plane because of the weight of the plane--especially someone obviously under the 185 weight airlines assume people weigh--I'd be glancing around at passengers to see who was bringing the most weight on the plane and thinking uncharitable thoughts. But that's one more reason why the airline should escalate the inducements until they get a volunteer.

UPDATE: The certificate was for $250, not $200.

AND JUST TO BE CLEAR: The airline was not singling out the heaviest passengers--my sons are way under 185. My point is that if the plane is overweight and that someone is going to have to leave, a certain common sense suggests asking the heaviest person to leave. One person is inconvenienced, either way, but the maximum weight is removed. If you see them trying to oust a thin person, don't you tend to think they ought to be going after somebody big? But they don't, for whatever reason. Fear of lawsuits? Desire not to seem mean? But they were mean!

CHRIS ADDS:

A couple points you missed on the blog about the American Airlines thing:

1) Three or four women working the gate inside the airport knew, and told John and me, that the airplane was overloaded, and even while it was being delayed never made a single announcement that it was overloaded. They knowingly overloaded the plane because they were too lazy to make an announcement over the loadspeaker that they needed a volunteer.

2) What they should do, if they're going to FORCE someone off the plane, is single out the person who checked the heaviest bag. They have that information--they weigh every single checked bag--and they could easily do it that way, something based on weight, without insulting people for being fat. Instead, they got rid of a thin guy, left all the [heaviest people] on the plane, and even left his bag on the plane.

Also, people inside the plane yelled at the guy for not allowing the couple that volunteered to leave the plane. Plus, they were completely unapologetic and even threatening towards us from beginning to end!