5 ms·

> Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, e

by 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 ago
Sure, 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 ago
huh? 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
- johnfn 10y ago
  Which is exactly what Oscar Munoz has done.
  - macintux 10y ago
    ...belatedly, after tremendous uproar and a tremendously lukewarm non-apology apology at first.
  - newman314 10y ago
    After the third or fourth attempt which does not reflect well on him.
jedharris 10y ago
The well-informed discussion on Naked Capital (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-removal-reporting-management-fail.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...) strongly supports the claim that the removal was illegal. It also provides interesting evidence that the decisions were traceable to United's attempt to reduce costs by using third party contractors and affiliates (the flight was operated by Republic, an affiliate). This quote is telling: "When I was a outsourced regional jet captain operating United Express flights between 2010 and 2014 the gate agents in charge of the regional (out-sourced) flights at United hub, Washington-Dulles, were third-party contractors. They were horribly trained and frequently surly. The gates were always crowded, everyone there was angry, nothing worked, it was utter chaos and misery. I absolutely dreaded flying there and did my best to avoid it, Chicago was only a little better."
- joezydeco 10y ago
  This is the best summary of the issue I have seen to date, and really gets to the root of United's situation. Especially this quote: "I really don’t think the upper management at United has any clue about the nuts and bolts, day to day, inner workings of the company. Post-merger United is too big to fail, too big to manage and far too Balkanized to govern. I fully expect the ugliness to continue at United."
  - otempomores 10y ago
    'Wenn das der Führer wüsste' falacy detected. The CEOs and shareholders know.. Or made it theire job to be not reached by that knowledge. Why be outraged over VW and downtalk this?
- johnfn 10y ago
  I'm not arguing the fact that United did a really bad thing. I definitely agree with that. I'm only arguing the supposition that United is a uniquely bad company.
  - killwhitey 10y ago
milesrout 10y ago
Of course you would be able to come up with similarly bad stories for many other airlines. Especially American ones. That doesn't excuse them. All American airlines suck. That problem should be fixed.
- vinay427 10y ago
  I don't think this is an entirely fair comparison, as US airlines are far more biased towards domestic flights which globally are held to a lower tier of service. That being said, I would still anecdotally evaluate them as of poorer quality than the better foreign airlines.
- hexane360 10y ago
  So the solution is to automatically give more business to every airline that isn't currently getting slammed in the media? That's not a good way to encourage competition.
BurningFrog 10y ago
Yeah, getting your news from whatever debris viral videos blow up is a modern way of staying informed, and may be the worst one yet invented.
Yizahi 10y ago
>You don't think you'd be able to dredge up similarly bad stories for any other airline? Hitting paying customer head on the armrest until he lost consciousness? I think no. I hope you don't believe "he fell" united version, because that's literally impossible in the economy seats. I may eventually come to terms with the loss of several hundreds dollars (or 1-2 thousand, due to lost car and hotel reservations) but concussion is inexcusable offense for me. I won't tolerate that ever.
mcv 10y ago
Sure, it may be an extreme case, but the CEO's reaction is telling. If everybody now accepts this as normal, we're sending United a signal that this is okay and they can continue like this. If we send a signal that this is not okay, they have a reason to try to do better, and so do the other airlines.

by johnfn 10y ago

jedharris 10y ago

Sure, 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 ago

huh? 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

johnfn 10y ago
Which is exactly what Oscar Munoz has done.
- macintux 10y ago
  ...belatedly, after tremendous uproar and a tremendously lukewarm non-apology apology at first.
- newman314 10y ago
  After the third or fourth attempt which does not reflect well on him.

jedharris 10y ago

The well-informed discussion on Naked Capital (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-removal-reporting-management-fail.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/united-passenger-remo...) strongly supports the claim that the removal was illegal. It also provides interesting evidence that the decisions were traceable to United's attempt to reduce costs by using third party contractors and affiliates (the flight was operated by Republic, an affiliate). This quote is telling: "When I was a outsourced regional jet captain operating United Express flights between 2010 and 2014 the gate agents in charge of the regional (out-sourced) flights at United hub, Washington-Dulles, were third-party contractors. They were horribly trained and frequently surly. The gates were always crowded, everyone there was angry, nothing worked, it was utter chaos and misery. I absolutely dreaded flying there and did my best to avoid it, Chicago was only a little better."

joezydeco 10y ago
This is the best summary of the issue I have seen to date, and really gets to the root of United's situation. Especially this quote: "I really don’t think the upper management at United has any clue about the nuts and bolts, day to day, inner workings of the company. Post-merger United is too big to fail, too big to manage and far too Balkanized to govern. I fully expect the ugliness to continue at United."
- otempomores 10y ago
  'Wenn das der Führer wüsste' falacy detected. The CEOs and shareholders know.. Or made it theire job to be not reached by that knowledge. Why be outraged over VW and downtalk this?
johnfn 10y ago
I'm not arguing the fact that United did a really bad thing. I definitely agree with that. I'm only arguing the supposition that United is a uniquely bad company.
- killwhitey 10y ago

milesrout 10y ago

Of course you would be able to come up with similarly bad stories for many other airlines. Especially American ones. That doesn't excuse them. All American airlines suck. That problem should be fixed.

vinay427 10y ago
I don't think this is an entirely fair comparison, as US airlines are far more biased towards domestic flights which globally are held to a lower tier of service. That being said, I would still anecdotally evaluate them as of poorer quality than the better foreign airlines.
hexane360 10y ago
So the solution is to automatically give more business to every airline that isn't currently getting slammed in the media? That's not a good way to encourage competition.

BurningFrog 10y ago

Yeah, getting your news from whatever debris viral videos blow up is a modern way of staying informed, and may be the worst one yet invented.

Yizahi 10y ago

>You don't think you'd be able to dredge up similarly bad stories for any other airline? Hitting paying customer head on the armrest until he lost consciousness? I think no. I hope you don't believe "he fell" united version, because that's literally impossible in the economy seats. I may eventually come to terms with the loss of several hundreds dollars (or 1-2 thousand, due to lost car and hotel reservations) but concussion is inexcusable offense for me. I won't tolerate that ever.

mcv 10y ago

Sure, it may be an extreme case, but the CEO's reaction is telling. If everybody now accepts this as normal, we're sending United a signal that this is okay and they can continue like this. If we send a signal that this is not okay, they have a reason to try to do better, and so do the other airlines.