What are your guy's thoughts on this incident? To what degree do you guys think this will hurt United?
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Ramifications of United Airlines forcibly removing their customer from the flight.
As you all have probably seen through social media and the news, the video of three Chicago aviation officers forcibly removing Dr. David Dao have caused significant backlash and outrage at United Airlines. Additionally, further information came out today about the victim having a broken nose, a concussion and two knocked out teeth from the incident and Dr. Dao may need surgery for the broken nose. United Airlines reaped $397 million in profits last year but this incident surely will impact their stock as well as see a decline in customers. However, many customers tend to stick to the airline company that they have used before purely based on comfort and affordability. This incident for me seems like a recurring trend of corporations having no compassion for their customers as well as bad policies regarding overbooking flights.
What are your guy's thoughts on this incident? To what degree do you guys think this will hurt United?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/united-passenger-david-dao-chicago.html?ref=business&_r=0
What are your guy's thoughts on this incident? To what degree do you guys think this will hurt United?
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Firstly, Thank you Daichi for posting this blog, so that more people will get to know this incident. I am very pissed by United Airlines and I will never take any UA flights. When this news first came out, my response was Excuse you United Airlines?!
ReplyDeleteI understand that some customers tend to stick to the airline company that they have used before purely based on comfort and affordability, yet based on previous experiences of taking UA flights, I have totally different views on UA. There is big difference between UA in-flight service and other Asian airline companies'. I am always very upset and dissatisfied towards UA services in general. My dissatisfaction normally reaches its peak when I am taking other Asian Airline companies, because it is so obvious that they do such a better job than UA and I am always impressed by their qualified and excellent food services and hospitality.
United Airlines didn't apologize for their overbooking and then violently pulling off their customers from the plane. In the past few days, their pretended apologies even make the whole case even worse. They just kept finding excuses and make justifications of their violent and rude behaviors. What really pisses me off was that UA utilized their public relation team to trash the customer Dr. Dao, stating that his "troubled past." Here I want to say dragging him off from the plane is nothing relevant to his troubled past.
I am sure that UA will be definitely losing a big portion of Asian customers at least, currently a lot of online boycotts has already spread largely among the world. UA's bad reputations of treating its customers will destroy its business at a great extent.
The way United handled this situation is unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteI literally cannot believe this happened lol. I can't imagine what was going through the heads of the employees who thought this was an okay way to treat a customer of their airline. I hope they face serious legal ramifications for this atrocity.
I am sure they will lose customers due to the event, as well as see a decline in their stock. That being said, I doubt it will be as impactful to their business as most people think. In this day and age, this will probably be completely forgotten by the end of the month (extremely short attention spans for anything in the mass media). I also believe people will still tend to buy the cheapest, most direct flights. If United continues to offer valuable flights such as these, I think the impact will be less than what they deserve in the long run.
Beyond the fact that it is very easy to be angry at United Airlines for what happened, I think that this situation is interesting for a couple of reasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst, to agree with Nick, customers are not that loyal to their values when it comes to airline tickets. Although they may choose another airline over United for a small price difference, it is unlikely that any proposed boycott will be successful.
A second point that is interesting in the United situation is that TECHNICALLY, they did not do anything wrong. When you buy an airline ticket, you are agreeing to a contract with the airline and the department of transportation. It gives the airline the full right to involuntarily bump anyone from a flight. Furthermore, not following the directions of a flight attendant is a federal crime, therefore justifying the police presence.
What happened was very unfortunate, unnecessarily brutal and easy to get angry about. Despite this, the free market is not going to stop United's practices. Perhaps the question we should be asking here is, should there be a law that protects customers from this type of abuse?
I definitely think that it will affect the number of customers who use the airline's services. But I don't know how much they'll actually be affected. Some people will definitely boycott the company because of this event. However, I think that many people might also consider their own experiences with the airline rather than this incident, especially since this has never happened before and probably won't ever happen again.
ReplyDeleteI certainly hope that, at very least, United Airlines staff have learned never to treat a customer like this ever again. How anyone thought this to be an appropriate way to treat a paying customer is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how it pans out. I don't know if this incident will impact the airline's profits as much as one would think. I think the airline will keep a large proportion of its clientele because although people have watched the video, many of them will dissociate themselves from the event when buying their tickets. I think that is why large corporations often act like they are invincible - they know that whatever they lose in remedying a situation like this will not compare to the profits they will continue to make.
I agree with Nick and Zoe. Although this wasn't the best way to handle the situation, the airline tickets usually do have fine print on them explaining that in this situation they have the right to remove people from the flight. Now, it doesn't say that they can drag someone off the plane... but still. And then just like Nick said, customers are still going to fly UA. Cheapest flights for the win.
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