United shares fall after fury over passenger eviction

CHICAGO: United Continental Holdings Inc shares fell as much as 4.4% on Tuesday after a worldwide backlash erupt-ed over a passenger who was dragged off one of the carrier’s overbooked US flights.

Video showing a man who appeared to be Asian being snatched from his seat, his limp body pulled from the pas-senger cabin of United Airlines Flight 3411, sparked an outcry on Monday when the footage went viral. On Chinese social media, the incident attracted the attention of more than 340 million users on the Weibo platform by Tuesday morning. United Continental got about 14% of its 2016 revenue from flying Pacific routes.

“The company has a very black eye, and they need to do some PR work, but I don’t think it will have any effect on the fundamentals,” said portfolio manager Craig Hodges of Hodges Capital in Dallas.

According to Tyler Bridges, a passenger who was on board the flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky, the man who was dragged off before takeoff said repeatedly that he was being discriminated against because he was Chi-nese. “He said, ‘I’m a doctor; I need to see patients,” said Bridges, a civil engineer from Louisville who recorded much of the incident on his phone.