"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:

What's the real story of the 2 teenage girls who weren't allowed on a United Airlines flight because they were wearing "leggings"?

I see the airline is defending the decision of the gate agent that these kids didn't meet the condition that passengers dress appropriately. And I see the internet is expressing outrage. But what I don't see is a picture — or an adequate written description — of how the teenagers were dressed. The word "leggings" covers a lot of ground. Leggings can be very thick or very thin, very loose or so radically tight that they are stretched out to the point where the butt crack is fully on display.

The incident was first reported on Twitter by Shannon Watts, a passenger at the airport who was waiting to board a flight to Mexico.... Watts said the girl’s mother told her the two teenagers had just been turned away because the gate agent said their pants were not appropriate travel attire. The woman had a dress in her carry-on bag that the child was able to pull on over her pants, and the family boarded the flight.

“The girl pulled a dress on,” Ms. Watts said. “But please keep in mind that the dad had on shorts that did not hit his knee — they stopped maybe two or three inches above his knee — and there was no issue with that.”

So... maybe it's time to crack down on men in shorts getting on planes. (Sorry for the reappearance of the word "crack." That looks wrong. Crack down. Yes, my leggings are stretched to transparency but when I get to my seat, I'll crack down.)

The airline's explanation is that that the family in question were "pass travelers" — which means they were using a benefit offered to United Airlines employees and dependents that lets them fly free. These people are seen as "representing" the company and held to higher standards that specifically impose dress standards that don't apply to paying passengers.

Under the pass program, they're only flying standby anyway, so they were not missing "their" flight, only stuck waiting for another flight. In the meantime, they changed what they were wearing.

My only problem with all of this — and otherwise I'd 100% support United — is that the man got to wear shorts.

Also, here's United's Contract of Carriage, Rule 21, "Refusal of Transport," which does apply to all passengers:

UA shall have the right to refuse to transport or shall have the right to remove from the aircraft at any point... Passengers who are barefoot or not properly clothed....

Who came up with that language "at any point"? We're talking about an airplane. Scary.