A video of a man being forcibly removed and dragged off an overbooked Chicago-Louisville United Airlines flight this weekend has gone viral in China, becoming the number one trending topic on Weibo, the country’s version to Twitter.
A story posted on the social media site called “United Airlines forcibly removes passenger from airplane'”was read more than 95.5 million times and discussed at length, according to the BBC.
Many commenters accused the airline of discriminating against the man, who has not been identified, because he is Chinese.
“When I was studying overseas, I flew with this airline and found their flight attendants were horribly rude and impatient. My friend and I thought it was because we were Chinese and this incident proves our feelings were correct,” one user wrote, the BBC reports.
Another Weibo user said they wouldn’t fly with the airline again “in [their] lifetime,” according to CNN,
“It’s straight-up discrimination,” another user wrote about the incident.
Oscar Munoz, United Airlines‘ CEO, said the company will work “with a sense of urgency” to conduct a review of the “upsetting” incident. Despite calls to boycott the airline, shares of United Continental Holdings closed up nearly 1% Monday.
