A recent video has surfaced showing a passenger on a United Airlines flight being forcibly removed from his seat and dragged off the plane by law enforcement officials. To put it lightly, the older man removed from the flight suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

The reality?

The video shows him being dragged on the floor of the airplane, off the aircraft. His face smashed into the armrest of the chair across the aisle as he was yanked out of his seat.

The video, which was captured by a passengers camera phone, has since racked up over eight million views, and sparked an onslaught of conversation across all of social media. In short: people are outraged, and United is taking heavy heat for the incident.

In addition, the PR-safe response issued by United CEO, Oscar Munoz, was underwhelming, to say the least:

"This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened. We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation."

The word "re-accomodate" has since taken on a life of its own on social media, users humiliating the CEO for dancing around what was captured in detail on video.

Aside from the obvious, why is this all such bad news for United Airlines?

Nine years ago, when another negative viral video about United hit the Internet, their stock price dropped 10 percent--a decrease in value worth about $180 million.

In case you're not familiar, here is the back story:

In 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell were traveling--and flying United. As he was getting off the plane, another passenger pointed out the window and said, "My God! They're throwing guitars out there!"

Carroll's $3,500 Taylor guitar had been broken during the luggage transfer process, which according to people looking out the plane, the luggage handlers were being less than conscientious.

Carroll proceeded to follow up with United to process a claim to have the cost of the guitar redeemed in flight vouchers, but to no avail. United claimed he had missed the 24 hour period and was out of luck.

So what did he do?

He wrote a song called, "United Breaks Guitars."

The video went on to accumulate over 16 million views. And shortly after it started gaining real traction, news and media outlets picked up the story. Carroll went on to do over 200 interviews telling his story.

We now live in a day and age where words spread fast. PR-speak and safe language in a public statement can't slow down a Twitter rage--and in fact, they often are just fuel to the fire.

Unfortunately for United, not only was this incident caught on video, but their ability to take appropriate ownership for the issue is one of the leading reasons the social conversations and bad press exponentially spired out of control.