The adage about a picture being worth a thousand words never seemed as true as it did early Monday morning, when a video clip shot around the Internet showing a passenger being violently removed from a United Airlines plane in Chicago for refusing to be “voluntarily” bumped from the flight. 
 
 United no doubt will expend thousands of words explaining or apologizing for this incident in coming hours, days and weeks. It won’t help. The video is just too raw. 
 
 Indeed, the airline’s initial response to the publicity already has left it covered in shame. 
 
 This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. — United CEO Oscar Munoz 
 
 United’s PR department first issued a statement explaining blandly that the Chicago-to-Louisville flight late Sunday was overbooked, and that “after our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation. Further details on the removed customer should be directed to authorities.” 
 
 United CEO Oscar Munoz then made things worse with a statement of Orwellian doublespeak. “This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United,” he said. “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers,” whatever that means. 
 
 [UPDATE: According to CNBC, Munoz followed up Monday evening with a letter to employees defending the airline’s ground staff and describing the still-unidentified passenger as “disruptive and belligerent.” He said the airline agents “were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight.” 
 
 [But Munoz, whose version of the episode appears to come from the playbook of how to dig oneself into an ever deeper hole, also undermined the argument that the flight was overbooked. He related that “after the flight was fully boarded,” gate agents “were approached by crewmembers that were told they needed to board the flight.” The implication is that the crewmembers heading to Louisville were late in arriving, that every passenger held a paid ticket and had been properly boarded, and only that only belatedly did United decide to pull passengers off the plane to make room. 
 
 [It’s unclear from United’s contract of carriage how either its rule regarding “refusal of transport” (Rule 21) or “denied boarding compensation” (Rule 25) applies to a passenger already seated and instructed to deplane to make room for a company employee rather than another paying passenger. 
 
 [Whether United had “no choice” but to forcibly eject the passenger also is questionable, as presumably the airline could have transported its crewmembers to Louisville either by road (a five-hour drive) or by chartering another aircraft. In any event, Munoz in his letter asserts that “treating our customers and each other with respect and dignity is at the core of who we are.”] 
 
 Plainly this was a botched job in countless ways and at multiple levels. The reports are that the flight was the last one to Louisville on Sunday, and that United offered passengers up to $800 plus overnight accommodations and an alternative flight leaving Monday afternoon in order to free up four seats for a flight crew needing to reach Louisville. 
 
 When you buy a plane ticket, here's what you have to agree to » 
 
 Video posted by United passenger Audra Bridges shows a passenger being forcibly removed from a flight. Video posted by United passenger Audra Bridges shows a passenger being forcibly removed from a flight. SEE MORE VIDEOS 
 
 When the voluntary offer failed, four passengers evidently were chosen at random to be involuntarily bumped. This happened after the plane had been loaded, which is certainly an unusual wrinkle in the annals of passenger treatment. One couple went quietly, but another passenger objected. Before being dragged off the plane, he reportedly identified himself as a doctor with patients to see on Monday. When he refused to go, the ground staff summoned airport police, who physically manhandled him out of his seat and dragged him, bloodied, down the aisle as several other passengers documented the event on their smartphones. The plane was delayed by two hours. 
 
 What sort of training United offers its personnel to manage such episodes isn’t known, but plainly it stinks. 
 
 What’s even more important is what this episode says about the terms and conditions of air travel in the United States. It’s in a bad way. 
 
 To begin with, the law allows air carriers to overbook flights — that is, sell more tickets than they have seats for. That’s plainly a situation that benefits the airlines almost exclusively, because it tends to ensure that every seat will be filled even at the cost of leaving some passengers behind. How many businesses do you know of that can sell you a good or service, accept payment, and then withdraw that good or service unilaterally for their own purposes — much less by force? 
 
 Passengers bumped involuntarily have rights to compensation, but the airlines have great latitude to set their own priority rules for bumping travelers. Typically it’s those paying the lowest fares, lacking membership in a frequent-flyer program, or checking in late who are most at risk. Bumpees who are going to be more than two hours late to a domestic destination are entitled to compensation of 400% of their one-way fare, up to $1,350, plus the value of their ticket. 
 
 These rules, obviously, are in dire need of upgrading to suit modern conditions. The Department of Transportation acknowledges in its outline of passenger rights that some passengers may be more amenable to voluntary bumping than others, or more flexible in their travel plans: “Almost any planeload of airline passengers includes some people with urgent travel needs and others who may be more concerned about the cost of their tickets than about getting to their destination on time.” The agency encourages airlines to “negotiate with their passengers for mutually acceptable compensation” in order to secure needed seats. 
 
 As Daniel Gross observed at Slate.com, airlines have squeezed their overbooking privilege until it screams for mercy, even as they’re consistently flying fuller planes. (Question: When was the last time you boarded a plane that had more than a small handful of middle seats open?) In the most recent boom-and-bust airline cycle, the industry “load factor” — the percentage of seats filled — bottomed out at 72.21% in February 2009, in the teeth of a crushing recession, but more recently has run in the mid-80s. That appears to be as high as it’s been in this century and may be an absolute limit, because some routes will never run at 100%. ||||| United Airlines has been a real dick lately. On Monday morning, the world woke up to a very disturbing video of a hapless passenger being bloodied and dragged off an overbooked flight so that a United employee flying stand-by could fly instead. This is just the latest in an increasingly enraging pattern of bad behavior by the airline. So what can you do about it? Easy: stop giving United your money. 
 
 This peaceful form of protest is called a boycott, and it’s loads of fun. If you stop flying United and tell all your friends to stop flying United, the airline will suffer, and at least a sliver of justice will be served. The best part is that there are plenty of other airlines out there that don’t abuse passengers and refuse to apologize. (United did apologize for “the overbook situation” but not for the abuse.) Other airlines will gladly take your money and make sure you get to your destination without enlisting a muscleman to slam your head into an armrest and forcibly remove you from the plane so that one of its employees can get a free flight. This is not a normal thing to do. Even the airline’s CEO couldn’t properly apologize for what happened. 
 
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 What’s especially despicable about United is the fact that this latest jaw-dropping incident doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for the airline. It was just a couple of weeks ago that United refused to allow three young girls to board their flight, because they were wearing leggings. United didn’t apologize for that incident, instead pointing concerned customers to an arcane clause in its contact of carriage. That opened United up to a real shitstorm of bad press. Then again, United must be used to this kind of thing by now. 
 
 There are plenty more incidents that suggest that United Airlines is an evil company. Last year, former Port Authority chairman David Samson pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy after an investigation revealed that Samson had given United permission to build a hangar in exchange for the airline reopening a route between Newark and Columbia, South Carolina, close to where the chairman had a weekend home. The favor-trading scandal also led to Jeff Smisek to resign as United’s CEO. Two other senior executives also resigned in disgrace. 
 
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 But wait, there’s more. Just a few months before Smisek’s resignation, United made headlines for diverting a flight in order to kick an autistic child off of a flight. This happened after fellow passengers claimed that the child was not being disruptive and pleaded with the flight crew to be more sensitive to the her needs. United apparently didn’t apologize for that incident initially, even though the local police who had to take the autistic child off the plane did. In response to the incident, hundreds called for a boycott of United flights. 
 
 Two weeks after the incident with autistic girl, United fucked up again! Tahera Ahmad, a Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University accused the airline of discrimination after she requested an unopened can of Diet Coke for “hygienic reasons” and the flight attendant refused. “Well I’m sorry I just can’t give you an unopened can so no Diet Coke for you,” the flight attendant reportedly said. But then, she gave an unopened can of beer to the man sitting next to Ahmad. When the Muslim woman protested, the flight attendant said, “We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane.” The call for a United boycott was quickly renewed when the story went viral on Facebook. 
 
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 So it’s safe to say that this United boycott idea is overdue. After all, the above horror stories are just a sampling of United’s bad behavior from the past couple years, and it seems obvious that they aren’t just isolated incidents. There seems to be a systematic pattern of United treating passengers badly and even engaging in corrupt dealings with the authorities. This is probably why United consistently ranks as one of the worst airlines for customer service. The airline is so terrible that last it enlisted a team to figure out how to be less awful. Clearly, they didn’t figure it out because United’s bad behavior seems to be getting worse, now that the airline is bringing in hired goons to bloody up passengers who are just trying to get home. 
 
 Do you want to get beat up by a mercenary on your next flight? Of course you don’t. So stop flying United, and tell your friends to stop flying United. There are plenty of good airlines out there. You shouldn’t have to give your money to a bad one. ||||| In case the viral video of police violently dragging a man off an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago didn’t make it clear, let us repeat: Airlines often have more passengers than available seats and some carriers, apparently, aren’t afraid to kick you off. 
 
 United said it not have enough room for all its booked passengers because it had to transport four crew members to Louisville for another flight. 
 
 United’s fumbling of the situation is one matter. Here’s a look at what overbooking is—and why airlines do it. 
 
 Why are there more tickets than seats? 
 
 Airlines frequently sell more seats on their flights than the airplane holds, a way to guard against passengers who cancel or somehow fail to make it to the airport. It’s legal, and airlines won’t it abandon the practice anytime soon because they would leave precious pennies on the table when passengers are no-shows. No airline wants to give passengers compensation, so United’s incident also exposes what might be a poorly managed inventory system. 
 
 Do I have to get off the airplane? 
 
 Yes. There are two ways passengers can be denied boarding: voluntarily and involuntarily. The US Department of Transportation requires airlines to first seek volunteers to take a later flight and carriers will generally offer compensation in the form of a voucher for future travel. If you go for this option, negotiate the terms and make sure the airline tells you if there are any blackout dates to use the voucher. The voucher amount can vary, depending on how many volunteers are needed and how many people are willing to get bumped. If 10 people come forward in hopes of a voucher, you’ll likely be disappointed because there could be more than enough volunteers. That will likely mean not the sweetest of offers. 
 
 What if no one wants to take another flight? 
 
 This is where airlines get nervous, and passengers should too. Without volunteers, airlines can pick passengers at random to get bumped. They make money when the planes are in the sky, not at the gate, so they’ll want to ensure they don’t hold up the plane. The Department of Transportation and airlines’ contracts of carriage spell out the amount of compensation, which depends on the fare and how long it will be before bumped passenger can fly. 
 
 If the airline offers you a new flight that will get you to your destination within an hour of your original arrival time, there is no compensation. If the new flight’s arrival is within one to two hours after the original arrival time, compensation must be at least 200% of the flight cost, but with a limit of $675. 
 
 On the Chicago to Louisville flight caught on video, United reportedly offered $800 and two people accepted. Under federal rules, if the substitute flight will get you to your final destination more than two hours later, or if the airline doesn’t make any other travel arrangements, compensation is 400% of the fare ,up to $1,350. United caps compensation at $1,350. 
 
 The passenger in the video was reportedly a doctor who refused to be bumped because he had patients scheduled the next day, according to the Courier-Journal. 
 
 Following a series of large airline mergers, passengers have fewer carriers to to choose from, an issue that crops up during technical glitches that ground airlines. That means that if passengers are involuntarily bumped but absolutely need to fly (think: a wedding, a funeral, a vital meeting) they have fewer carriers on which to catch a last-minute flight. 
 
 Can an airline forcibly remove me? 
 
 Yes. Airlines have a low bar for kicking passengers off planes. Any boarding disturbance could delay the flight’s departure, or if an incident escalates in the air, it could force the pilot to divert to another airport, a costly detour. 
 
 An airline can remove you from a flight for screaming at passengers, insulting a president’s daughter (yes, really), singing, or even for smelling badly. 
 
 Under those rules, the United crew on Sunday generally would be allowed to deem the passenger a security risk merely for his refusal to obey crew instructions. That brings on airport security or the police. 
 
 Isn’t there a better way? 
 
 Probably. The backlash against United on social media has been swift following the alarming images of the bloodied passenger. Higher compensation to the passengers might have drawn more volunteers, and saved the airline from yet another public-relations black eye like last month’s leggings debacle. Certainly the airline could have afforded to offer more—its profits topped $2 billion last year.
– United Airlines' treatment of a passenger who was forcibly removed from an overbooked flight is the final straw, writes Adam Clark Estes on Gizmodo: It's time for a boycott. "There are plenty of other airlines out there that don’t abuse passengers and refuse to apologize," Estes writes. "Other airlines will gladly take your money and make sure you get to your destination without enlisting a muscleman to slam your head into an armrest and forcibly remove you from the plane so that one of its employees can get a free flight." This, by the way, is "just the latest in an increasingly enraging pattern of bad behavior by the airline"; other reasons to boycott United include, but are not limited to, the time United diverted a flight to kick off an autistic child and the time it refused to give an unopened can of soda to a Muslim chaplain on one of its flights. Estes is far from the only person outraged—Sasha Lekach at Mashable calls United's attempts at apologizing for the situation "meaningless corporate jargon" that just enraged people more. At the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik says United's handling of the entire incident was "botched" and shameful, but notes that the real problem is that the law allows airlines to overbook, even at risk of a situation like this. "How many businesses do you know of that can sell you a good or service, accept payment, and then withdraw that good or service unilaterally for their own purposes—much less by force?" At Slate, Daniel Gross calls the overbooking system airlines use "ridiculous" and "outdated," and notes that lately, more passengers than usual are getting bumped from overbooked flights, a fair number of them involuntarily: It's time for "a better way," he writes. If you find yourself in the same unfortunate situation as the United passenger, Quartz offers up an explainer of what you're legally entitled to.