Hi all. Long time flyertalk reader, but never posted. This incident moved me to action.
First off $800 is a ridiculous limit on the gate agent compensation.
Second, the flight where they violently drag Dr. Dao was not an overbooked flight, the United crew that wanted his seat was not booked for the flight, they had seated all the passengers already and a United flight crew for another flight showed up and the airline decided they needed to put them in this flight and throw off their passengers. My guess is crew had late members for another scheduled flight for the crew, not going to speculate why they were late, but regardless it was not overbooked. This makes the compensation limit even more ridiculous.
Last, but not least what kind of idiotic booting prioritization system does not take the person's profession into account. A pilot rated to fly on that type of plane and medical physicians have uses in emergencies (case in point above) and should be one priority level up since they will render free aid in the event of an emergency. Maybe even higher,
your gold status isn't going to help my heart attack or acute appendicitis.