United Air Lines – The Bad News Continues to Dribble Out

By Hank Boerner
April 12, 2017

United Air Lines, need we say, is in the midst of a serious brand and reputational crisis. Social media chatter is replete with those awful loops of passengers’ cell phone videos of “brutality” on a UAL aircraft — and are spreading the bad news worldwide, in a flash!

Broadcast and cable channels had a good run of the story with passenger videos as the highlights of the report on the goings-on in Chicago on Sunday night. Love those ubiquitous cell phone cameras.

How both alarming, and mesmerizing: Who could turn away from the video clips of ham-handed airport security staff dragging a 69 year old paying customer out of his window seat, slamming his head against the seat post, knocking off his glasses, bloodying his face, dragging him down the aisle in front of other passengers. No wonder it went viral – worldwide!

While he (Dr. David Dao) apparently tried to explain at the start of the incident that he was a doctor and needed to get to his patients in Kentucky, airline staff and airport security officers ignored him — and got on with the job.  And so we saw them in action.

Oh, those resulting headlines:

Facebook: (“Man Violently Dragged Off Plane After United Airlines Overbooks Flights!”)

Also reported with the passenger videos on The Huffington Post. “Dragged like a rag doll,” a witness posted on a Twitter account.

Facebook: (“United Airlines CEO Says Cops Will Never Remove a Booked Passenger Again…Will Use Common Sense.”)

A passenger watching the incident told the media: “He said, more of less, I’m being selected because I’m Chinese…”)

All of this is certainly not good news for the airline on the China mainland, where there is wide public outrage being expressed. The doctor clearly being brutally yanked from his window seat – which he paid for and thought he was entitled to — and was apparently of Chinese or Asian origin.

(The devil is in the details; have you ever read the fine print of the Airline Contract of Carriage, which sets out the rights, rules and procedures governing your relationship with an air carrier? Here’s United’s, in case you are considering a flight: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract.aspx )

United and its China Market

United has scheduled flights between the USA and China cities — Chicago/Beijing; Chicago/Shanghai; Denver/Zian; Houston/Hangzhou..,and more city-pairs. United has flights to five mainland China cities from various U.S. cities. In all, UAL has cities to 14 different Asia/Pacific destinations. Not a market to have branding issues in, especially this, with discrimination overtones.

What are the Asian customers of the airline thinking about today? There were almost 300 million immediate “hits’ on Chinese social media — and the story is still “new” and in the current news cycle. A boycott was part of the chatter.

And those passenger-provided cell phone videos continue to play in endless loops on television news media around the world.

As Fox Business reported, “Horrifying Video Threatens United Airlines’ Big Investment in China.”

Speaking from Experience

I’ve worked a good number of years during my career as an airline corporate citizenship manager, spokesman, issues and crisis manager, and marketing strategist. I can’t fathom what would move airline personnel to conduct themselves in such a manner when it comes to dealing with their customers. ( “The flying public,” as one would say,)

Yes,working with passengers, things can get tense. Perhaps the cabin crew was exasperated due to a series of incidents (the “now what”!); maybe the ground crew just wanted to get customers off/employees quickly to avoid criticism (what? you didn’t get the flight crews to Louisville on time?).

Of course, all manner of operational issues come up with an airline company having so many moving parts. Fleets of giant airliners moving through the skies, leaded with passengers; landing and taking off at various airports, large and small; the task of people-scheduling to make sure employees (including flight crew) are at their assigned post for “go on time”; fuel loading; baggage loading/unloading; dealing with changes in weather…and more.

Airlines train and train again to make certain their employees are prepared for “anything.”

And then in an instant it hits the fan and we find out if all that training paid off, are we really ready. Or not! United clearly was in the “not” column this weekend.

The Crisis Details Dribble Out

The details continue to dribble out (the worst scenario in a critical issues situation, of course). The Sunday evening Chicago-Louisville flight (3411) was ready to go and then came the announcement: the plane is over-booked and four passengers need to get off.

The airline’s explanation was that the flight being overbooked (again, not uncommon) meant that four people had to yield their seats. Money was offered (again, not uncommon — it’s the way carriers coax passengers out of their seats).

What happened next? The Washington Post played the story big in the nation’s capital. Where lawmakers, employees of regulatory agencies and other key players could take it all in.

This is an example of where the right or wrong language used is Important — especially in critical incidents.

The Post reported that the airline told the local newspaper in Louisville that the situation was “an involuntary denial of board process.” (Is that clear to you now?).

Apparently no one on the Sunday night flight home to Louisville quickly volunteered to leave their seats. (If you were headed home, would you have gotten up? Maybe – people do that when the price is right.) That’s when the airline “chose” passengers to leave the flight to accommodate four UAL personnel who “had to fly” to get to other aircraft to meet flight schedules.

So, the airline staff selected by some means four people to leave the aircraft.  Three people agreed to leave. When a fourth passenger would not leave his seat, the crew summoned Chicago Department of Aviation security and the man was violently dragged out of his seat and down the aisle and off the plane.

Somehow he got back on the plane, blood on his face, glasses back on, howling it was said, and then was dragged off again. He eventually left the terminal on a stretcher. (The flight will not leave until everyone is off, the cabin crew evidently barked to the passengers.)

When the four crew members came on to fill the vacated seats they were reported to have been booed. Aren’t you ashamed to work for this company, people shouted to them.

The airline began to communicate, sending conflicting messages to the employees and media. (The flight was overbooked; or, the passengers had to make way for United employees. The passenger was belligerent end unruly. The removal was established procedure. The man ran back onto the aircraft in defiance of both our crew and security officials. )

EVERYONE was taken off the plane and after a while re-boarded as the man left on a stretcher. Some did not re-board (they were high school students and their chaperone, the Post said).  The CEO issued an apology to the passengers who were re-accommodated!

Fall Out – Death by a Thousand Cuts

As The Washington Post put it: “It’s a story that has shaken a global air carrier worth billions of dollars – and one that people around the world can find nothing right in at all.”

Investors reacted on Monday, sending the UAL stock downward at once. (CNN: “How to make a PR crisis a total disaster.”)

At the daily news briefing the White House press secretary was asked if a federal investigation was warranted. The U.S. Department of Transportation was looking into the situation, we learned. The late night comedians had new content to add to their stand up routines.

Finally the CEO apologized to the passenger who was “forcibly removed” and to all customers on board the fight. “No one should ever be mistreated this way.”

Another oops moment the media had fun with: Oscar Munoz, the CEO, was named “Communicator of the Year” by PR Week for “transforming the fortunes of the beleaguered airline, galvanized the staff, and set the airline on a smoother course…” (This after a year-and-a-half on the job.)

Systemic Failure?

Over my four decades of crisis management, one of the things learned early on is that it usually is not a single “thing” that goes wrong. Whatever issues bubbling just beneath the surface can suddenly erupt to complicate the response to the (initial) single incident.

The information from the local scene (usually distant from the where the leaders who have  to respond is ) can be scant; the news reports can be conflicting; the standard comments prepared in advance can sound hollow and uncaring as the details of the incident become more widely known. (“This is standard operating procedure?”   Really?)

Unhappy employees can react to situation irrationally and even violently; local managers can make very “wrong” decisions and then try to correct, making things worse at times.

This was a Sunday evening; management was not likely to be at the office and equipped to move quickly to address the situation and begin communications (not in either the HQs or the airport).

Lessons Learned?

What are the lessons learned? We hope for the Chicago Department of Aviation, it’s don’t go dragging and injuring passengers off a plane because a long-time hometown airline asked you to. The aviation authority had moved quickly to put the security officers involved on administrative leave.

For the airline leadership: Best to always think up and down the value chain about actions taken and communications needed with key constituencies.

Employees (we hope they are viewed as team members and not just numbers in an organization as it grows larger).
Customers (especially those in physical proximity, at the curb, at the counter, boarding the plane, in their seats, during the fight, as they leave the cabin, getting their luggage).
Potential customers (what are they thinking today about their intention to fly United).
The public-at-large (who as they continue to fly in greater numbers and frequency have come to think of airlines as un-caring, faceless bureaucracies that take advantage of the public with planes that are cattle cars in the skies).

Regulators (yes, airlines are still regulated entities).

As for not flying United, we must remember that they have 50% or more market share at some key cities (Newark, New Jersey) and considerable share of market at Orlando, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Denver, Houston. (In 2010 United and Continental merged, creating one of America’s largest airlines.)

Perhaps then we should re-examine the structure of the American airline industry: have the dominant carriers become too big to manage?

Should we explore public policies that would begin to return us to the days of robust competition within the U.S.A. industry to try to ensure greater competition and more “customer-friendly” service?

More accountability by large carriers? Should we devise consumer protection measures that would help to reduce the perception that airlines don’t give a damn about their customers?

These and other questions will likely be raised by public policy experts in the days ahead, as the United situation calms down…and another airline crisis erupts. United meantime is the poster child for everything Americans hate about the airline industry.

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Author Post Script:  July 6, 2017 – ABC News Report

Well, it happens again — United Air Lines accused of abusing a customer today.  A mother traveling with a 27-month old son, en route to Boston from Hawaii, had to hold the boy on her lap for hours of the final leg of the flight.  She bought a ticket for the son — two tickets for the flight, money in the United till.  So what!  Hey, we are overbooked – so hold the kind on your lap. (As unsafe as that is – note, please, federal safety regulators.)  A standby passenger took the boy’s seat.

Later United evidently learned that the boy’s ticket was not properly  scanned.

The woman did explain the situation to the crew.  We wonder what is missing in common sense, good judgment, customer-first (should be) thinking at the carrier.  Oh, and the woman appears to be of Asian background.  United is counting on the Asia market – on China flights — to assure its future.   A small note to think about as you Stay Tuned top United’s passenger treatment.

 

Days We Will Never Forget. Nor Should We. They Are Burned Deep in Memory…

by Hank Boerner

There are days that we should hever forget. The President of the United States said that after the awful tragedies of September 11, 2001, when thousands of Americans and visitors died and thousands more were injured in the direct attacks against American targets by foreign interests far, far away. And yet, so close.  The attackers were living amongst us, for a time, preparing for the day they would inflict great damage on our nation.

There are four or maybe even five generations of Americans alive at this moment, going back to some who are of the Greatest Generation, the men and women who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought the good fight for democracy from 1941 to 1945 —WW II.  Many are still with us.  They remember “Pearl Harbor Day,” each December 7th.

December 7, 1941, a “date that will live in infamy,” said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the U.S. Congress and by radio to the nation. That day — December 7, 1941, the naval forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. military forces at Pearl Harbor in the U.S. territory of Hawaii. Almost 3,000 young men and women died in that attack.  All of my young days I was reminded that it was “Pearl Harbor Day” today.

Another day that many of younger ages — the Baby Boomers — will recall was the funeral train that carried the body of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, slain by an assassin in California in 1968. I remember this because I stood in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City as his coffin was carried out…and put on a train that slowly wound its way from New York through Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and on to Washington, D.C. I had done work with the good senator, borther of the slain president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

This was reminiscent, broadcaster noted, of the final train ride for President Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, carrying his body to burial in Illinois — many miles, along parts of the same route.  Tens of thousands of people lined the route on both occasions.

There is another tragic day to remember for those alive in 1963. Who can forget where they were when the news came on November 22, 1963 that the dynamic young president was shot to death in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.  John F. Kennedy was in office just about 1,000 days — not even completing his first term.

As with other events, everyone would remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the leader of the “New Frontier” for America was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. I remember watching the most well-known newsman in America, Walter Cronkite on CBS Network announcing the president’s death.

Today, September 11 — Let Us Remember

And so it is today, for many Americans, as we stop what we are doing to remember the frightful, awful, tragic events of September 11th. Four giant airliners were hijacked, from their take off points in the New York region, Boston and Virginia, and flown by fanatic, deranged men into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, into the Pentagon in Northern Virginia, and what would have been either the White House or the Capitol Building on the highest point in Washington, DC — except for the brave actions of passengers  on United Flight 93 over rural Pennsylvania.

How unbelievable, how frightening to consider even today, 15 years — some 5,500 days — later.

For those not born yet, or too young to remember the events of the day:  American Airlines Flight 11 — Boston to Los Angeles — departing Boston at 7:59 a.m. and then crashing into the WTC (#1) North Tower at 8:46 a.m.

Then United Air Lines Flight #175, departing from Boston at 8:14 a.m. — flying from Boston to LAX — hitting the WTC South Tower (#2) at 9:03 a.m. .  Then American Airlines Flight #77, leaving Dulles International (Virginia) at 8:30 a.m. — heading for Los Angeles,, flying into the Pentagon at 9:30 a.m.

And then the report of the “missing” United Air Lines Flight #93, flying out of Newark at 8:42 a.m. en route from New Jersey to San Francisco — reported down on the ground in Shanksville, PA at 10:03 a.m.  Even today, all of this is very difficult to comprehend.

These were massive passenger jets, with a combined almost 300 passengers and crew members on board, loaded with many tons of volatile jet fuel, carrying innocent passengers (including children) en route to a  happy destination.

It was a bright, sunny morning, you may recall, all along the Atlantic coastline of our continent.  Summer weather was still with us.  New York region schools, schools in Boston, Washington area schools, Pennsylvania schools were open as the new school year was beginning.  The summer break was over (Labor Day was the prior week); and literally thousands upon thousands of men and women streamed into the giant twin towers of the World Trade Center, which dominated the New York City skyline in Lower Manhattan, and other nearby complexes in the financial district.  These towers of the WTC stretched 100 stories into the blue skies.  Giant elevators whished tenants and visitors to the highest levels.

And then, in a few terrible minutes, two giant passenger jets flew directly into the buildings. It is hard even today to divine what was on the minds of the histrackers as those in the cockpit aimed the acricraft into the building.  And even harder to think about the fear on the part of passengers —  “souls” in airline parlance — in the last moments of their lives.

And what of the thousands of people at work as the rush hour was ending, high atop the bedrock of Manhattan Island — what were their thoughts as they heard the crash into their building?  Smelled the smoke?  Understood the threat to their lives?

At 9:59 a.m. unbelievably, the South Tower would fall to the ground, killing those inside and many on the ground, and spread deadly dust (asbestos) throughout the downtown. Throughout the heart of this nation’s vital financial center. At 10:28 a.m. the other tower would collapse. Chaos reigned.

And I think today with tears in my eyes of the brave responders.  Firemanic forces — proud members of NYFD — running to the danger.  343 New York City firefighters would give their lives to save others.  Police officers would die that morning, more than 70, members of NYPD (“New York’s Finest”), the Port Authority of NY & NJ Police Department; and some of the Federal agency officers on duty that day.

Thousands more responders — uniformed and volunteers — would be sickened, and many would die, as they were first responders working on the “pile” to find survivors and pull them to safety. And then, when there were no more, they would work on the pile to clear debris and look for human remains.

And so, today, I stop to pray for the souls of those who lost their lives on Setpember 11, 2001, and for those who we lost in the days and weeks and months after.  I will think about the brave actions of the passengers on Flight 93 who fought the thugs who stole their plane and prevented a huge tragedy in our nation’s capital city.  I will pray for those who lost their lives in the bastion of the nation’s military, the Pentagon complex just across the Potomac River from Washington.

This is personal.  In my hometown here just outside the city, we lost three dozen people.  This morning in Patriot’s Park, they are being remembered.  Across our region we lost hundreds of men and women.  And the bells still ring in churches as brave responders succumb to their illnesses.  My long-time friend, Rep Peter King ascended to the chair of the Homeland Security Committee of the House, and I take pride in the good work that he and many others in government have been doing since 2001 to keep us safe. He is there with head bowed this morning at “Ground Zero.”  His is a police family.

But this is a New Normal for America and especially for the young men and women who grew up after September 11, 2001. It is a different world for them — will any of them — or us — ever feel safe again?

Today, please say your prayers for those who lost their lives on that awful day and in the days thereafter. Including our men and women in uniform taking the September 11 fight to our enemies around the world who did these awful things to us.

May God bless America. And long may the Stars & Stripes wave overhead, a proud beacon to us all. The flags at Ground Zero in NYC, at the Pentagon, in the Pennsylvania field — all have very special meaning to Americans.

Separately today in this space I will share my notes of September 11, 2001, when I was the American Airlines responder in New York City.