United Airlines, learn some PR from other people

People are saying many different things about this incident. Everyone was truly shaken by how United had handled this before, during, and after. I am sure people have become scared to fly any airplane since they think this could have been them. In this blog, I have brought a couple insights to light to see what people’s opinions are how they think this could have been handled.

The first person I want to bring to the stage is President Donald Trump. Despite being a president that has had PR scandals around him, he had released a statement saying the following:

“You know, there’s a point at which I’m getting off the plane—seriously,” Trump was quoted as saying. “They should have gone up higher. But to just randomly say, ‘You’re getting off the plane,’ that was terrible.”

President Trump does bring up a good point. It is actually what a lot of people had said. I absolutely agree with his statement that some amount of money would have gotten me to volunteer to get off of the plane. United should have kept increasing the amount because at some point someone would have taken it causing this incident to not happen. I really liked that he said this incident was terrible. That says a lot coming from him and I am sure it definitely made other people satisfied that their president was agreeing how horrific this incident was. I think he should have commented on how United was handling this and gone even further to publicly apologize to Dr. Dao. I understand that it might not have been his place but offering his apology would have given United a lesson.

Other airlines have offered their apologies and stated how they could have avoided this if it was them. Many airline companies have taken this opportunity to comfort their customers ensuring that this would never happen on their flights. One particular airlines I want to mention is Emirates. Emirates is one of the best and luxurious airlines to fly internationally.. They are known to have amazing service and a professional staff. The president of Emirates, Tim Clark, released the following statement:

"Let me say it was a disgrace. It shamed the airline industry as a whole. We don't go about our business in that way. It's symptomatic of a corporate culture within that company from the board and chief executive downwards. Had it been me in that position I would've have had blue flashing lights on cars going right through the company to find out how this could've been allowed to happen in the first place. That was probably the last thing I do before I resigned.”

He brings up a really good point. It did shame the whole airline industry. People have become scared to fly with any airlines. I did like how he brought up how United behaves and what the company culture is like claiming that this incident shows how the company reacts. I think this was a perfect statement that was released by another airline. I feel like more of them should have done the same. They also should comfort the customers saying this won’t happen on our airplanes.

The news had mentioned that the system “randomly” selected passengers to get off. Many have argued that this list is not really that random since it is very much controlled by United. United looks at who has never really flown United and which customer won’t care. They obviously don’t want to kick off customers who are premium or loyal members. They also consider connecting flights while creating this list. United also does not like separate families. Unfortunately, it did since Dao was flying with his wife. United has this list created before the flight even starts to board and stays till the flight has taken off. They had created this list by putting in an algorithm. The founder of crankyflier.com, Brett Snyder agrees that this list is not truly random.

"This was an abnormal situation because usually the computer’s making the decision before everybody's on the plane. It's never truly random, it's what they put into the algorithm."

Snyder stated that this was an abnormal situation. In my opinion, I think he is trying to state that this whole fiasco could have been avoided if they handled this before boarding everyone. I am sure United knew that the flight was overbooked; I just don’t know why they had to wait till the last minute to do something about it.

This scandal has had a huge affect on the airline industry causing people to even say they want to boycott United. This issue was not handled properly at all since United showed no remorse until day 2 or 3 of their apologies. Since then, many other events have happened on their airlines which is making this issue worse for the company. They have stated that they will be reviewing everything such as their values and philosophy and giving another statement on April 30th.  

Sources:
1. http://nextshark.com/president-donald-trump-releases-statement-united-airlines-incident/
2. http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/20/investing/emirates-united-passenger-disgrace-resign/
3. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/04/12/random-computer-search-really-blame-uniteds-removal-debacle/100351720/