As deeply troubling as the video is, analysts said, the emotional fury such incidents generate usually is fleeting, lasting a few days or weeks at most. The reality, they say, is that consumers have long put price, convenience and personal taste ahead of outrage.

And partly because of a rash of recent mergers that left the country with just four major airlines, many customers may not even have much choice. United’s 2010 tie-up with Continental allowed the company to claim more than 50 percent of passenger traffic in Houston and Newark, and to serve 1 in 3 fliers from Washington Dulles International Airport and in San Francisco.

The short-lived nature of consumer movements is partly why experts in crisis management often advise executives to placate the public in the short term. On Tuesday, two days after the 69-year-old passenger’s removal from a flight from Chicago to Louisville, United chief executive Oscar Munoz appeared to do just that. Abandoning any defense of the company’s actions, Munoz said: “I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way. We are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again.”