7 ms·
The comments in here are oddly fatalist about the whole thing. We put a lot of trust in airlines; and not just in safety or to get us somewhere, but we also giv
by rm999 10y ago
The comments in here are oddly fatalist about the whole thing. We put a lot of trust in airlines; and not just in safety or to get us somewhere, but we also give them an unusual number of legal protections once we're in their care.
When the drama first started I kind of wrote it off: "this must have been a misunderstanding compounded by a single employee's stupidity". But when I found that it was not only condoned, but fully defended by the company top-down, red flags went off. Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, etc). Then, I started remembering some terrible experiences I've personally had on United. Like the time they left me stranded in India for 2 days (rumor is the staff did this on purpose to protest some new policy around maximum flight times), then made me wait 3+ hours to get approved for a hotel room at 1 am even though I was flying business class (which would have been wrong even if I wasn't business class!) Or the time a gate agent lied to me about contacting a connecting flight, leading me to miss an entire day on my Thailand trip. I have many more of these.
My point here is that United really does seem to have ingrained issues that directly harm their customers. This toxic culture doesn't benefit them in any way, but if nobody cares they'll have no incentive to stop.
- paulddraper 10y ago> when I found that it was not only condoned, but fully defended by the company top-down, red flags went off. I thought United Airlines and CEO apologized? http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-boarding-20170412-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-boarding-201704... > “That is not who our family at United is,” Munoz said. > Later Wednesday, United said all customers on that flight are receiving compensation for their ticket costs.
- empath75 10y agoThat was his third statement on it. The first one strongly defended their actions.
- jackweirdy 10y agoAnd an internal one defended the event because the passenger was "belligerent", as if that made their actions and what followed OK
- late2part 10y agoSane evidence suggests the customer stood his ground and raised his voice, and this was escalated by the police called by the corporation to support their false assertion of contract rights. Customer was not belligerent. Stupid employees and stupid police or rent-a-cops escalated the situation to violence.
- SyneRyder 10y agoHere's a link to the CEO's original/first email supporting the staff: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/north-america/revealed-the-letter-from-united-airlines-boss-defending-employees-after-passenger-was-dragged-from-plane-35612671.html http://www.independent.ie/world-news/north-america/revealed-... "Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this. While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right."
- late2part 10y agoTheir CEO thinks this is 'flying right'. F* him. F* Munoz. F* United.
- wapz 10y agoThe one terrible experience I had with United is when I was flying from Japan to SFO connecting at LA. We arrived at LA and didn't see our connecting flight on the flight status screen and went to customer service. The lady said "well it was cancelled and they should have told you in Japan. We can't help you now." Both flights were WITH united and when I asked for another flight she said "I'll send you tomorrow. OK?!" Well it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the others' have experienced and didn't cause me to boycott them but these recent allegations that have surfaced seem pretty serious.
- johnfn 10y ago> Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, etc). You don't think you'd be able to dredge up similarly bad stories for any other airline? Look, what United did on that flight was pretty awful. But the rest of this to me smacks of the typical rumor mill that spins up when a company has bad PR, which surfaces the typical sort of 2-deviations-below-the-bell-curve scenarios you'll occasionally have when you're a company at United's scale - a scale that employs tens of thousands of people that do not actually all act as one giant United hive mind as much as we'd like them to but rather each as autonomous people that can occasionally do wrong things in a way that has no bearing on the company at large. (That was a pretty long sentence.) For what it's worth, I know an employee of United who loves it. But what was that saying about the plural of anecdote again..?
- jedharris 10y agoSure, we should collect some data. That said, I and my family decided over a year ago never to fly United again, based on multiple bad experiences. Independent of this incident, I'm sure we made a good decision.
- wehere1 10y agohuh? of course not all employees of the company will think alike. but when an employee does something fucked up like they did in this case, a reasonable company should condemn it and support the affected customer
- perseusprime11 10y agoIn terms of culture, United needs to learn from Southwest. Southwest has great culture internally as well as externally. United has bunch of slogans as culture. Their CEO has no clue about creating a culture that delights customers. He blamed the customer in the letter and then blamed it on system failure but never on him. He failed to create a customer centric culture and instead fostered a culture that perceives customers as a threat or idiots for flying their airline.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zzalpha 10y agoIn terms of culture, United needs to learn from Southwest. Southwest has great culture internally as well as externally. LOL, you mean this Southwest? https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/feb/15/overweight-filmmaker-banned-southwest-airlines https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/feb/15/overweight-film... Wait, maybe you meant this Southwest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/18/uc-berkeley-student-removed-from-southwest-flight-after-speaking-arabic-on-plane/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/1...
- lightbyte 10y agoI dont see anything wrong with your first link. If someone can't fit in their seat they should buy two seats or not fly.
- Mithaldu 10y agoAs a fat person myself, yeah, if you get that far it's on you to make that clear in advance, not in the airline to measure your waist at the gate. That dude is just being an entitled dick.
- hexane360 10y agoDo you have some examples of Southwest's good culture? My only experiences with Southwest have been negative. a) They're always more expensive on the flights I take. b) They hide their fares from aggregators like Google Flights.
- bingomad123 10y agoThe worst part of the story was United's campain to smear the victim and to paint him as a sex offender.
- what_ever 10y agoIs there any proof that United was the one behind smear campaign?
- avs733 10y agoI want to agree with you, because that was utterly noxious...but I still am hungup on the fact that the Police (in instances like this and things like SWATting) continue to just do the bidding of some random person. Its like we have transcended violence committed in the name of the state for violence committed by the state in the name of violence.
- mcv 10y agoI missed that smear campaign. It seems quite a number of media outlets are willing to divert attention from a beleaguered corporation and implicitly defend their right to beat up passengers.