The flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday evening had been fully booked, United spokesman Jonathan Guerin told USA Today newspaper.
According to passengers' accounts, the incident started when the airline tried to find four passengers to get off the overbooked flight so they could accommodate airline employees who needed to get to its Louisville destination. "We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation".
In a letter to its employees, Munoz said: "Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this".
Tuyet Le, executive director of AAAJC, said the incident involving Dao is representative of systemic police mistreatment of minority communities in Chicago and nationwide.
Munoz continued: "The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment". But hours later, he later began defending his employees, describing the passenger as "disruptive and belligerent".
Munoz told ABC that he had no plans to resign over the incident and profusely apologized to Dao, his family, passengers and United customers.
"I wish the president would not have taken any options of the table", Davis said.
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Cellphone videos of airport police yanking a 69-year-old passenger out of his seat and dragging him down the aisle have become a public-relations nightmare for United. He said the world caught United at a bad moment and that it would never happen again.
The incident is also under review by the US Department of Transportation.
Last year, United forced 3,765 people off oversold flights and another 62,895 United passengers volunteered to give up their seats, probably in exchange for travel vouchers.
Thousands of people have seen the video of a passenger bloodied and dragged off a flight for refusing to give up his seat.
Munoz vowed this "will never happen again on a United flight" and that law enforcement won't be involved in future. We'll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.
FILE - In this Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013, file photo, travelers check in at the United Airlines ticket counter at Terminal 1 in O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Such flights are operated by one of eight regional airlines that partner with United. "Clearly, when you get into an airplane and you're boarded and seated your incentive model needs to change and I think that's one of the policies that we'll look at".
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