This is tricky. Some say that while horrifying, what happened was not unlawful. "The captain is in charge of the aircraft," Simon Calder, the publication's travel correspondent, explained to The Independent. "And if he or she decides that someone needs to be offloaded, that command has to be obeyed. From the moment that the unfortunate individual in this case said, 'I’m staying put,' he became a disruptive passenger. He was disobeying the captain’s command." However, this comes into question when you consider that Dr. David Dao was not simply " denied boarding "; this case looks like it may have been a " refusal of transport ," for which United indeed had no legal grounds. Either way, United made a big mistake in allowing all the passengers to board before resolving the issue.