That choice was just plain wrong, and allowing it to unfold as it did knowing there was an $800 solution on offer was morally reprehensible.
And you're being accidentally or intentionally misleading about what we can all see in the video - Dao did not "get into fisticuffs" or "become belligerent", he sat in the seat he'd paid for. United-directed rent-a-cops started the fisticuffs and belligerence.
Excusing this with "but it's how airlines operate" is such a cowardly point of view it genuinely astounds me that anyone capable of reading and commenting on a site like this could hold it. If _any_ business is designed to operate this way - where errors on their part result in a procedure that involves and excuses assaulting people - they deserve to be shut down.
I'm happy not to "re-regulate" the airline industry, I'm just saying if we're going to let "the market" be the fundamental driving factor - that "the market" needs claws. The things that they should not be allowed to do need to have powerful corrective market forces against them.
And claiming that any alternative solution to assaulting Dao will result in "the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfares" is again intentionally missing the point - THEY COULD HAVE SOLVED THIS FOR $800! AND THEY CHOSE NOT TO.
Fine them enough to _really_ hurt, or close them down and put everyone in charge in jail for assault.
(If you want to get into pure speculation worst case outcomes here - take a look at the UAL shareprice - it dropped tom 71.5 to 68.5 in the 25 mins from 9:30am yesterday - about $900mil of market cap - which then bounced most of the way back, but settled something like $450million down . If you want stupid rationalizations for why we need to change or not change the industry here - here's mine: If we allow this as acceptable practice, then obviously next time a flight crew needs a seat, the gate manager will just call his broker, make sure all the other passengers have their phones out, and beat shit out of the most photogenic passenger on board. Instant profit.)
Most level headed people don't put up a struggle to get off. Most people who are thus inconvenienced or wronged will take it up via normal channels. If I'm asked to deplane, unwarranted as it may be, I'm not getting into fisticuffs --I'll take it up later via other means, and it appears most people in the same situation do the same. Very few people become belligerent. Again, not saying this is the preferred mode to operate, but it's how airlines operate. Maybe an 8 figure fine changes that but my guess is they'll just have more legalese giving them more leeway in bumping passengers. I don't think it's going to change an industry which historically operates on thin margins. Not unless they become "re-regulated" and we get the privilege to pay 2x to 4x current airfare like people did pre-1980s in real dollars.
Here's why I think he was a jerk --the airline, right or wrong was operating from a legal standpoint which includes the ability to take people off a plane (you may debate that) but he did not retaliate in a legal manner --he took personal affront and physically resisted removal. Separately, I think the airline were jerks because they should not have resorted to their legal options when they had not exhausted reasonable monetary options first.