An even quicker U-turn than Donald J Trump’s on Syria after years of declaring “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long-term conflict?” occurred this week from the boss of United Airlines.

Oscar Munoz did little to enthuse his shareholders, I suspect, when his initial reaction to the beyond appalling treatment of a passenger was that his staff had acted entirely properly and Dr Dao had been battered into unconsciousness because he was ‘disruptive and belligerent’.

The practice of routinely overbooking planes in order to maximise sales is unsavoury at best.

Very few passengers choose their travel dates casually and view any postponement of their booked flights with equanimity. We have all experienced (and had no choice but to accept) delays to our travel plans through weather, technical failure etc.

To experience a delay because the airline concerned has failed to run its business competently and needs to eject fare paying, checked in and seated passengers from a plane because they have operational staff in the wrong place, is enough to make even the mildest person both disruptive and belligerent.

Airports and the boarding process are not by nature the stuff of calmness and peace.

By the time you are finally seated you have a right to believe that the stress of travel has reached its nadir. Not so for Doctor Dao.

When he was ‘randomly selected’ for ejection he had already declined to volunteer because he was a doctor and had patients to see the following day. Not unreasonable.

The only reasonable course of action is to offer incentives that will eventually tempt a volunteer to vacate their seat. The problem is of the airline’s making and they should pay the price not the bloodied 69-year-old dragged kicking and screaming off the plane.

I suspect that the eventual price paid by United Airlines will be a lot more than a couple of First Class tickets to a destination of the good doctor’s choice.

The plummeting of the share price is probably a clue to the Trump-like 360 degree change of attitude by Oscar Munoz who is now promising the earth and wholescale procedural changes to calm the tsunami of bad publicity. he has created for his airline.

And as for the practice of overbooking, if no one ever again agreed to leave a plane in similar circumstances they might have to revise that too.