Pepsi may be secretly thanking United Airlines as social media backlash has shifted from the beverage brand’s Kendall Jenner ad fiasco to the airline company after a video surfaced on Sunday evening of a passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight. United Airlines passenger ejection may cause a permanent brand damage. David Dao, is the name of the passenger who was violently ejected from the United Airlines flight in Chicago.
This public relations nightmare could impact United Airline’s reputation and business results in the long run, especially with the incident following just weeks after another sticky situation in which two teenagers were stopped from boarding a flight for wearing leggings. In that incident, though, the airline said the girls were traveling on “buddy passes,” which requires adherence to a policy dress code.
United Airlines’ decision to drag the passenger off a flight from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday attracted more than 130 million views on the Weibo platform by Tuesday afternoon.
Shares of United Airlines fell on Tuesday after David Dao was physically dragged off a flight, prompting a backlash on social media in China and around the world. Shares in United Continental Holdings, the airline’s parent company, closed down by more than one per cent in New York on Tuesday, after earlier having been as much as four per cent lower. At its lowest point, that was the equivalent of about $1 billion US worth of the company’s market value. Also, the airline has no current plans to alter its advertising schedule.
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United CEO Oscar Munoz needed to immediately apologize. He did not. Instead, he offered a non-apology, ‘for having to re-accommodate these customers.’ Basically, he is apologizing for their overbooking policy, and not the violence and humiliation their passenger suffered, or the emotional distress it caused all the other passengers witnessing this unnecessary event. Ultimately, the bigger picture here is that United needs to overhaul its overbooking policy. If it is known that a flight crew needs to take seats with passengers on a flight, that must be known well enough in advance that employees staffing the gate make room for them before passengers are boarded.
If the initial reaction on social media and at office watercoolers is any indication, United has already lost a significant group of customers. Right now United would be best served to approach its communications strategy into two customer retention buckets; one for customers that are still remaining loyal to the brand, and one for customers that claim they are never coming back to the brand. For the first bucket it’s all about quick and swift communication that reinforces United’s values and shows immediate differentiation from the competition. The second bucket is a long-term strategy that will require a more personalized approach and can only be rebuilt over time.
