President Donald Trump Releases Statement on United Airlines Incident

President Donald Trump has weighed in on the recent fiasco involving United Airlines and Vietnamese-American passenger Dr. David Dao who was violently dragged off the flight.

Speaking in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump expressed that what happened to passenger Dr. David Dao was “horrible.”

The airline reasoned that the Vietnamese-American doctor was told to give up his seat because the flight was overbooked and that seats were needed was to accommodate United employees.

According to Trump, regardless of the reason, the bigger issue was the amount of money offered to volunteers.

It was reported that United had offered $400 and a hotel accommodation to those who would give up their seats, doubling the amount offered after no one volunteered initially.

“You know, there’s a point at which I’m getting off the plane—seriously,” Trump was quoted as saying. “They should have gone up higher. But to just randomly say, ‘You’re getting off the plane,’ that was terrible.”

United has been on the receiving end of international outrage since Dao’s video became viral on various platforms of social and mainstream media. In the face of growing calls for boycott, the company’s market value took a significant dip.

In a recent interview with ABC News on Wednesday morning, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz said the company will no longer be using police officers to remove passengers from an overbooked flight.

“This will never happen again,” Munoz was quoted as saying. “We are not going to put a law enforcement official onto a plane to take them off … to remove a booked, paid, seated passenger. We can’t do that.”

Feature Image via Flickr / Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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