People on social media continue to comment on United Airlines dragging

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Yubin Du

FILE – In this Sept. 8, 2015, file photo, a United Airlines passenger plane lands at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J. Twitter users are poking fun at United’s tactics in having a man removed from an overbooked Chicago to Louisville flight on April 9, 2017. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
Published April 11, 2017 at 3:32 PM
Updated April 11, 2017 at 4:57 PM

The video showing three security officials dragging a passenger from a United Airlines flight at a Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday continues to anger people around the world.

On the Chinese social media website Weibo, the video has already been read by 320 million people. The hastag #美联航强制乘客下机# (#UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane) has become the one of the most read topics in the last 24 hours. Many say they believe the man’s race played a factor in his removal.

Over 320 million view from Chinese weibo on the #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane news

One Weibo user said:

“United Airlines just said ‘we apologize for having to re-accommodate’, but did not apologize to the injured passenger. I heard that lots of passengers have already returned flight tickets and cancelled their membership. United Airlines screwed up.” @M1RANDAZENG

Another Weibo said:

“People already know what happened, so how will the incident be resolved? What can we do if we encounter a similar situation? We need to think about that.” @GD-TXie

Others have also re-shared comedic re-cuts of United’s marketing videos:

Soical reaction: United New Promo by web users

Chinese Weibo users have also made fun of United using a popular television drama “With the name of the people” which focuses on anti-corruption.

In the drama, a corrupt official fled the country on a United flight and asked the flight attendant for champagne. The flight attendant asked him what he was celebrating, and he said “Freedom”.

Weibo users changed that line of dialogue so that the official tells the attendant: “For not forcing me off the plane.”

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese web users also shared U.S. comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s video on the incident.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary said searches for the word “volunteer” on its website surged more than 1,900 percent on Monday.

Merriam-Webster defines the term as “someone who does something without being forced to do it.”

Twitter fury and ridicule was also swift:



On a more serious note, people also launched a petition on the White House website, calling for a federal investigation into the incident.

The petition has now received the required 100,000 signatures to get a response from the White House.

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