Fallout continues from beating of
United Airlines passenger David Dao
By
Marcus Day
14 April 2017
14 April 2017
Public anger around the world has
continued to grow following the wide circulation on social media of videos
showing police brutalizing a 69-year-old doctor, David Dao, and dragging him
from a United Airlines flight last Sunday.
Highlighting the viciousness of
Dao’s beating and removal from the plane, his representatives revealed at a
press conference Thursday that the doctor had sustained significant injuries,
including a concussion, a broken nose, the loss of two front teeth and a sinus
injury.
“I would defy anyone to suggest
that there was not unreasonable force and violence used to help Dr. Dao
disembark that plane,” said his lawyer, Thomas Demetrio. Dao’s attorneys
indicated that he might file suit against both United and the city of Chicago.
They filed court papers at a Cook County court Wednesday requesting the city
and airline preserve all surveillance footage, cockpit recordings, passenger
lists and police reports.
The incident was touched off last
Sunday when the airline ordered Dao and three other passengers to leave the
plane, scheduled to depart from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, first
claiming the flight was overbooked and later stating that room was needed to
transport four crew members. Dao had a paid ticket, and said he needed to see
patients the next day along with his wife, who is also a doctor and with whom
he was travelling. When Dao refused to leave, United called police on board the
plane, who proceeded to violently remove Dao.
Several smartphone videos
captured the brutal treatment of Dao and the horrified response of other
passengers, many of whom loudly protested the actions of the airline and the
police.
Dr. Dao’s daughter, Crystal
Pepper Dao, said at the news conference, “What happened to my dad should never
happen to any human being regardless of the circumstances.”
The initial response to the
incident by company spokesmen and United’s CEO, Oscar Munoz, sought to downplay
its significance and contrasted starkly with the events depicted in the video,
only fueling more outrage among millions fed up with the degrading and
humiliating treatment by the major airlines and airport security. In Orwellian
language, Munoz himself initially apologized for having to “reaccommodate”
passengers. In a letter to United employees, however, he attacked Dao as
“disruptive and belligerent,” and defended the decision to have police remove
him from the plane.
Belatedly realizing the scale of
anger internationally (nearly half a billion people have viewed the video in
China alone) and hemorrhaging of hundreds of millions of dollars in stock
value, the company has scrambled in subsequent days to carry out damage
control.
On Tuesday, Munoz released a
thoroughly unconvincing statement feigning contrition for Dao’s abuse, saying,
“The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many
responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those
sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened... I want
you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it
right.”
Desperately seeking to stem the
PR fallout, United reportedly offered compensation to other passengers on the
flight. Munoz also claimed that United would no longer use police to remove
passengers from their flights—unless it is a matter of “safety and security,”
rendering the commitment meaningless.
Accounts
from passengers have pointed to a pattern by United of forcing ticketholders
from flights involuntarily, whether because a flight was overbooked or to make
room for flight crew or VIPs. According to a 2016 PBS Newshour report,
the airline had the highest rate of “involuntarily” bumped flyers, at 11 per
100,000.
A Los
Angeles Times columnist reported multiple instances of passengers
being asked to leave a flight: one in which a family that had been flying
standby was asked to get off to make room for CEO Munoz and his family, and
another in which a man was threatened with handcuffs unless he gave up his
first-class ticket to another who was deemed “higher priority” by the airline.
Politicians from both
big-business parties have also attempted to head off popular discontent touched
off by the Dao beating, posturing as morally outraged at the incident.
Sean Spicer, President Trump’s
press secretary, called the event “troubling” in semi-incoherent remarks,
saying, “I think clearly watching another human being dragged down an aisle,
watching, you know, blood come from their face after hitting an armrest or
whatever, I don’t think there’s a circumstance that you can sit back and say
this probably could have been handled a little bit better [sic].”
The heads of the US Senate
Commerce Committee released a letter to the airline and Chicago’s Department of
Aviation Wednesday, saying that United’s explanation “has been unsatisfactory, and
appears to underestimate the public anger about this incident.”
In
Chicago, Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, infamous for his role in the cover-up
of the police murder of black teenager Laquan McDonald,
fretted over this latest viral video of state violence, declaring for what
seemed like the hundredth time that there would be a “thorough investigation”
to “ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
The City Council, concerned about
the potential loss of tourism revenue, held a hearing with the Commissioner of
Aviation Thursday. Alderman Michael Zalewski, chairman of the council’s
aviation committee, said the event had given O’Hare Airport a “black eye.”
Zalewski revealed that the
Aviation Department police may not have even been legally allowed on the plane,
saying, “They are allowed in the terminal and baggage area, but my
understanding is they may not be allowed on a plane.” He added that he wasn’t
sure the airport cops were even allowed to make arrests, or only issue tickets.
The Aviation Department announced Wednesday that it had placed two additional
officers involved in the incident on administrative leave.
Despite the mutual handwringing
of the major political parties, they have both been complicit in the
decades-long processes of industry deregulation, attacks on airline workers and
the annulment of constitutional rights at US airports, which converged in Dao’s
assault.
An
examination of Federal Election
Committee data published by the Center for Responsive Politics
shows both parties have received lucrative handouts from United Airlines,
which, like many other corporate behemoths, makes sure to purchase bipartisan
favor.
In 2001, the Bush administration
and Congress handed the airline industry $15 billion after the 9-11 attacks.
Eighty percent of the bailout went to the nine largest commercial carriers with
United Airlines receiving the biggest slice of $644 million.
While
United has sought to pad its bottom line by implementing overbooking, baggage
fees, smaller seats and other cost-cutting measures, which make flying a
dreaded experience for many—if they can afford it at all—it has also manipulated
the tax system to great advantage, with the full complicity of the political
establishment. In 2015, the company reported a $4.7 billion tax
write-off due to losses in previous years, wiping out its tax bill of $1.5
billion and boosting its net income from $4.5 billion to $7.3 billion.
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