The social media conflagration surrounding United Continental’s forcible removal of a passenger from an overbooked flight has now transcended both borders and language, with the story rocketing to the top trending spot on China’s Weibo social network .
The tag “United Airlines forcibly removes passenger from aircraft” was the top trending item on Weibo on Tuesday. As noon approached the topic had garnered 46m readers and 34,000 comments on the popular Twitter-like platform.
The incident, in which a man is dragged screaming and bleeding from an overbooked flight, had already ignited a social media firestorm on the anglophone Internet. But it found fresh kindling in China after a comment from another passenger was translated into Chinese.