No, it's really not about this one incident. United's customer service record has just fallen apart over the past several years, and many of us have had miserable experiences flying United. Every single one of my nightmare travel stories has been on United. Their CEO took as his mission to improve morale and build it back up, and ended up throwing gasoline on the smoldering fire instead.

So when we heard the news, we didn't just say "How could an airline do that?" Instead we said "An airline knocked out a passenger and dragged him off a plane so a stewardess could have his seat? Let me guess... was this on United?"

(Spirit would have an equally good guess, but at least they don't pretend to be on par with the other carriers.)