By David Stanczak
In the wake of videos that went viral the other day after United Airlines forcibly removed a passenger from an overbooked flight from Chicago to Louisville, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz sent an e-mail to airline employees putting United’s spin on the situation.
It is unclear how much of the purpose of the e-mail was to bolster employee morale, knowing they would be bombarded by snarky comments from passengers who had seen the video, and how much was PR. If PR was the main purpose of the message, it never got off the ground.
Ultimately, the justification contained in the message relied on the small print in the contract with passengers which tells them that their ticket does not guarantee them a seat on the flight they booked, and on the fact that the passenger “raised his voice and refused to comply” when he was told to give up his seat. But the passenger wasn’t removed for being unruly; he became unruly only after he was informed that we was being removed.
Ultimately, the problem resulted from the industry practice of overbooking flights. Because airlines know that not all passengers booked on a flight will show, they over sell the flight so that even after the no-shows, the flight will be completely or nearly full. But sometimes the flight is more than full even after the no-shows. That’s when the airlines play Let’s Make a Deal and see how high they have to go to buy a passenger’s willingness to take a later flight. Reportedly the bid reached $1,000 and overnight accommodations with not enough takers, when United announced that their computer would pick the unlucky passengers to be left behind. What that process touts in “fairness” is more than offset by its coldness: the computer neither knows nor cares about the urgency of the flight to the persons bumped. Couple that with the fact that the removals were generated by the need to seat United employees who needed to be in Louisville to work flights there. It is true that it was law enforcement people, not United employees who dragged the passenger off the plane, and may have given him a tune up in the process; but when you call the cops, you take what you get (reportedly one of them has been taken off duty as a result of the incident). I suspect, but don’t know, that the situation could have been avoided with a little foresight and creativity. Even if it could not have been avoided, increasing the bidding for volunteers would have been far cheaper than the cost of United’s tarnished image and the lawsuit that is likely to follow.
Oscar’s e-mail was doubling down on stupid. The gate employees can be forgiven for allowing this debacle, but the CEO’s stupidity was far more glaring and hurtful to United’s “friendly skies” image.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
The opinions expressed within WJBC’s Forum are solely those of the Forum’s author, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media Inc.
