United Airlines: What to Learn from What They Did Not Learn. An Analysis of United Crisis Communication Campaign

“The customer is always right”. This is what United Airlines’ crew members did not learn during their training sessions. Neither did United CEO Oscar Munoz.

Why?

Last year, on April the 9th,  a man was dragged from his seat on a United Airlines overbooked flight. Some passengers recorded what happened, and the video went viral.

Source: Guardian News

A few days later, an article on The Guardian explained what happened. Since the company’s very first attempt to react to the unpleasant event, major problems arose. In this blog post, I address five aspects of the Crisis Communication campaign that prevented the company from achieving the desired results.

1. Lack of proactivity

As Eriksson (2018) underlines, company image depends on dialogic strategies and on the extent to which these are proactive, rather than reactive. United CEO Oscar Munoz’s first response on United Twitter page was more a reaction to the event, than a proactive attempt to apologise to Dr. David Dao, the man who was forced to leave by Chicago Aviation Security Officers.

Source: CNN

2. Inconsistency

The CEOs further official statements added fuel to the fire. Based on the timeline provided by The New York Times, Mr. Munoz’s first statement was released on Monday morning, and mainly emphasised procedural issues (e.g. “overbook situation”). The tweet also euphemistically described the way Dr. Dao was “re-accomodated”. In the evening, Mr. Munoz sent a letter to United personnel, in which Mr. Dao was described as “disruptive and belligerent”. On Tuesday, the CEO took full responsibility and apologised to “the customer forcibly removed”.

Source: The New York Times

By putting the blame on procedures and the customer first, and by taking full responsibility later on, Mr. Munoz showed inconsistency in the way the company handled the situation. This is detrimental to the campaign, in that incongruent responses increase consumer’s skepticism towards the apology statement (Chung, 2018).

3. CEO questionable use of social media

Wang and Huang (2018) argue that CEO’s communication on social media reflects company image. Whether company image is shielded from bad publicity depends on CEO authenticity and approachability. The way Mr. Munoz reacted to the event shows that resorting to CEO for official statements is not always the solution. Hence, “the conclusion that using social media is good for organisations [...] is questionable” (Valentini, 2018).

4. Failure to consider future implications

The video went viral in China,  an important international market given the exponential growth of the aviation industry in the last years, as this article from CNN shows. However, no one at United considered such an aspect.

Source: CNN

5. Lesson not learnt

One month before Dr. Dao, two 10-year old girls flying as pass travelers were denied to board because they were wearing leggins (article on The Guardian). More recently, a dog died in a United flight because his carrier was placed inside one of the overhead compartments (full article on The Washington Post). In both events, the focus of the statements was more on procedures and protocols, than on consumers.

Source: The Washington Post

People at United will have an hard time in trying to escape from the content that online users are sharing on social media. United company image, as well as its CEO credibility, is compromised.

Source: Fast Company

Will the company turn into a phoenix and obtain new life by arising from the ashes of its failures?

About Angela Bonanno | LinkedIn | Facebook

Passionate about art, sport, and music.

She would have loved to study Interior Design or Photography, but she ended up being a MSc student in Persuasive Communication at Universiteit van Amsterdam.

In the end, they are all types of communication, aren’t they?