I've been saying for years we have by far the worst PR dept of any Major airline.

My worst fears have been realized in this past few weeks.

DL has by far the best PR dept of any major. They have a major incident and it's page 20 of the Transpo section of USA Today with 2 sentences.

I may be wearing a tin foil hat here, but there seems to be a definite push to make this incident worse than a crash.

We had a bad policy. I would almost bet that all other major carriers had the same bad policy. We used the policy on a mentally unstable passenger. The airport police determined they would go to defcon 5 to implement UA policy.

The crime here is that the policy is changed, which is good. However the pile on from social media makes it seem as though this happens every day and that UA employees beat up pax, and spit on them afterwards.

The reality is except for the policy, the outrage is because of the method of removal, which is all on Chicago airport cops. The drag method wasn't request by UAL. Cops do this for trespassers as well on private property. It was excessive force, but this was escalated by the passenger when he refused to comply. Cops den by like people who don't comply. Now we've set the precedence that if you disobey crew members, you will be rich.

I fully expect scammers to go full salvo on the new policy and the ambiguity in which we operate within right now.