United no doubt will expend thousands of words explaining or apologizing for this incident in coming hours, days and weeks. 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. (United did apologize for “the overbook situation” but not for the abuse.) “Well I’m sorry I just can’t give you an unopened can so no Diet Coke for you,” the flight attendant reportedly said. 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. 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. 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. 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. What’s even more important is what this episode says about the terms and conditions of air travel in the United States. 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. To begin with, the law allows air carriers to overbook flights — that is, sell more tickets than they have seats for. 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? 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 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.