Trump aside, most executives don’t write any of their external statements, whether on press releases or Twitter. They have a Public Relations (PR) department within marketing that handles this, creating words that get attributed to the executives. The entire purpose of PR is to make the company look good.
A company as large as United very likely has both internal PR people and consults with external PR firms. These external firms work with many companies and their leaders have seen or read about every PR disaster and how things are handled well, or poorly. They have blueprints of how to handle various PR disasters, and their experience guides them on how to handle new ones.
That is what is so fascinating to me about the “CEO’s statements”. Where did the PR failure happen? Did the PR team not realize the disaster that was unfolding? Or did they realize it and were they over-ruled by the lawyers, or the CEO?
Of course, no matter where the PR failure happened, it is still ultimately the CEO’s fault.
From what I remember, legroom was similar back then. However, back then, loads were lower, so that you were more likely to have an empty middle seat next to your aisle or window, instead of being in the middle seat (with a greater likelihood now of being between two obese passengers due to increasing obesity since then). I.e. they are cramming more passengers into each flight now, even though the seat density is similar. Also, lighter loads meant that there was less likelihood of an overbooking or other situation where they must deny boarding or deboard anyone.
Of course, the lighter loads back then came with airlines flying into bankruptcy more often, since empty seats are wasted capacity.
Well, time for housecleaning–CEO and his PR advisors and bringing new culture of service.
I remember when our kids were little 2 decades ago and agents at the airport and gate could help smoothe over seat issues as some seats were reserved for them to be able to assign just prior to boarding. Now, nearly every economy plus seat is for sale from when the flight first begins to sell, so the agents have little or nothing to work with. Flights are often full or oversold so even less room to maneuver. It’s become a very challenging and sadly often unpleasant experience to fly.
Seat width is also getting narrower, making it tougher for small to normal-sized folks to rest shoulder blades against the seat–for larger folks, they have to sit at an angle and hope for an aisle seat so they can have some space from it.
I remember a very pleasant experience with my DD who was under 2. The gate/ticket person loved children, and with empty seats, moved me so DD had a seat in the empty seat next to me.
My husband and I flew Delta to and from Detroit two weeks ago. We had assigned seats on the way there, but not on the way back! To my surprise, when we got to the gate in Detroit, the agent gave us economy plus seats! Maybe it was because we smiled and were polite.
BB, you asked. I know my scenario won’t happen but if I was given an option of “would you like to pay more and guarantee a seat?” I’d select no and risk the bump. Especially since I’m the person who will take the incentive
BB, I wouldn’t pay more for a guaranteed seat because no seat can really be guaranteed when there are potential weather issues, mechanical failures, and flight cancellations.
Now, I have enough UA miles to get an iPad with cellular! Hmmmmm
I am talking about the gate agents. They have no authority to keep upping the ante. They have policies and procedures to follow, they can’t start offering up $2K of the companies money for a $149 flight. Most individual employees do not have discretion to do those sort of things, and if they were to pull out their own wallets and offer people a months salary, they would probably be fired.
Companies can change their limits, policies, individuals can’t.
Gate agents can easily call their supervisor, who can call their supervisor, who can call their supervisor, and so on, to get approval for upping the ante.
As you say, busdriver11, United could cancel flights instead of paying someone to get off the flights voluntarily. United is free to continue to have bad policies that will result in flights getting cancelled. That would be stupid, and it would cost them money that they could have avoided with more sensible policies involving paying enough money so that people would voluntarily accept giving up their seats.
Or, they could be smart, and allow gate agents to offer more money. In the scheme of things, this is not a lot of money. People like money. Usually when United offers their crappy $800 vouchers someone accepts. Wave $1000 in cash or AmEx gift cards, and chances are, someone will jump. Wave $2000, and you’ll have more volunteers than you need.
I would hope that an airline realizes that paying $X for IDB is far more costly in terms of goodwill loss than paying $X for VDB, so that it should be willing to pay significantly more for a VDB than the mandated cost for IDB for goodwill purposes. If the gate agents were limited in the VDB compensation they could offer, then it would seem that United (or Republic) policy on the matter has the limit set too low when considering the goodwill effects (even in the absence of an escalation like what happened in the Dao situation).
(Yes, I know there is a separate argument about whether the Dao situation was IDB in the usual sense or not, but for the purpose of this discussion, letting “DB” mean “deboarding [of an already boarded passenger]” instead “denied boarding” does not change that paying to find a volunteer is far better in goodwill terms than involuntarily forcing someone off.)
I’m sure some inspiring CS student can come up with a bidding app to help airlines manage this. Flight overbooked? Need passengers to opt out of their seat and be rebooked on a later flight? Everyone enters their bids and seat number on the app, lowest and quickest wins/loses their seat. I’d bet it would work better than asking for volunteers and dangling offers. Gaming theory. The backstop could be that people will be bumped randomly if needed.
How many times does it need to be said that a criminal case adjudicated over 10 years ago has absolutely no bearing on what happened to Dr. Dao in any way, shape, or form.
Considering all that, to even bring it up at this point is not only a red herring, but IS ESSENTIALLY VICTIM BLAMING.
It’s no different in my book from a bully who justifies his/her bullying by saying, but [victim] did [something bad in the past irrelevant to the actions of the bully].
And if a bully attempted to use that as part of an apology at my Catholic elementary school, the teachers/principal would not only reject that apology as completely invalid, but likely compound the punishments heaped upon the student* to make clear this form of “apologizing” is really a non-apology and thus, unacceptable.
Up to and including the principal telling the bully and his/her parents s/he's expelled and should find themselves another school to attend.
Well, everyone on the flight thought it was important to get to Louisville on that flight.
But increasing the offer until enough volunteers take it will find out which passengers place the least importance on getting to Louisville on that particular flight (i.e. the volunteers who take the offer that others do not).
Most definitely. I don’t even use the vouchers, they are basically worthless. When you offer cash, you will definitely get more takers. Certainly allowing agents to that instead of the suggestion to call a escalating number of supervisors is the smart route. For that route, I think people would take far less than 2K. That’s a months salary for many.
why don’t we look into the background of all the people involved? The manager who made the decision to bump passengers, the crew that showed up suspiciously late, the 3 airport cops, Munoz himself. I’m sure if we go back 10 years we will find all sorts of juicy details of their imperfection that we can use against them and thereby distract everyone from the real facts of the case.
The WaPo had an article about this, titled something like, “crucified man had previous run-ins with the law”.
Maybe it was because we smiled and were polite.