When an airline sells more tickets for a flight than it has seats on the plane, it typically seeks volunteers willing to give up their seats in exchange for one on a later flight and a cash voucher of several hundred dollars. That’s called getting bumped. Many of us were, until Monday, unaware that being bumped is sometimes compulsory. And virtually none of us, thankfully, had suspected — till video footage of a United Airlines passenger apparently being dragged forcefully from his seat — how ugly those instances could turn.

The latest development of the story: a revelation that the company itself apparently places the entire spectrum of “bumping” experiences under a single anodyne rubric: re-accommodation.

“ ‘I apologize for having to re-accommodate these passengers.’ ” — Oscar Munoz, United Airlines

That’s an excerpt from a United tweet featuring a statement attributed to the Chicago-based carrier’s UAL, -0.07% chief executive, Oscar Munoz.

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To its credit, the @united account on Twitter selected the post as its pinned tweet.

The Sunday evening flight, United Flight 3411, was from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Louisville International Airport.

Read more:You, too, could get dragged off a plane if the airline overbooks your flight