Plane Pains

This week, Dr. David Dao, was forcibly removed from his paid seat on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville. The senior was filmed being dragged off the flight with a bloodied face as passengers gawked at the unbelievable scene. As if the action of forcibly removing a random customer and having it caught on tape was not bad enough for United Airlines PR, the way the CEO responded made it worse. Oscar Munoz, CEO, stated a very unconcerned and short apology for having to remove the customer due to overbooking rather than apologizing for the way the customer was removed. Joseph Gerth, a columnist for The Louisville Courier-Journal, wrote an opinion piece for USA Today, stating his disbelief that Munoz was somehow named PR Week’s communicator of the year last month; ironically right before this detrimental PR mistake that made the United stocks drop 4%.