By S Narendra
(Former adviser to PMs and ex Spokesperson, Govt of India)
A paid passenger of United Airlines
was dragged out of his seat to make room for the airline crew. Videos showed
the passenger forcibly dragged out of his seat and later running back to his seat with blood on his face. Videos
of the incident went viral.
United Airlines shares soon declined
by 7%.And, UA has become the butt of jokes and UA competitors came out with
their own take such as this one from South West airlines: ‘We Beat Competition,
Not You’.
UA CEO’s first reaction was to defend the staff action.
He went on to describe the passenger, an American citizen and a doctor of Vietnamese origin as ‘ disruptive’.
A statement from UA tried to defend its action as routine with legal sanction.
It was claimed that when an airline over-books, it can off load passengers. In
US airlines routinely overbook and when required to off load passengers, they ‘incentivise
volunteers' by offering sweet deals,
In the present case, UA allowed passengers
to board the aircraft and then decided to off load. Force was used to yank out
passengers selected at random for off loading. Normally, off loading takes
place at boarding gate before allowing passengers into the aircraft. In this
case there was the possibility of inviting racial bias.
UA CEO did not factor this in while
issuing his first statement.
After the video went viral, damaging
the reputation of UA and inviting share holders’ ire, the airline came with another statement regretting the
incident, but not a full apology. No action was proposed against the concerned
staff.
When things went out of control with
criticism mounting, the CEO came out with apology (media reported that he
refused to resign taking responsibility for the unseemly incident). By then a
petition with 150,000 signatures demanding CEO’s resignation had become public.
In a damage control effort, UA
announced full refund of the fares to
all passengers on the flight.
In the meanwhile, the passenger who
was dragged out of aircraft was in a
hospital and his lawyers had approached a court with a plea to ensure that all evidence of the incident be preserved.
Sadly, UA did not come out with a
statement how it was compensating the victim for the ill -treatment meted out
to him. Nor did the the CEO or some senior UA official go to meet the victim
and his family with a wholesome apology and settle the matter privately,
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| The author |
The wholesale refund offer to all
passengers showed that UA had messed up but this gesture was a classic case of
too-little-too-late.
A bad situation had turned into a
first class crisis and reputation mismanagement as the CEO did not steer UA out
of the mess but brought upon it a crisis with his unwise first reaction.
