Service Failures at United Airlines (UA) Flight 3411

United Airlines Case Study Write-up
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United Airlines (UA) Flight 3411
The events of 9th April 2017 were a significant setback for United Airlines (UA). UA had maintained a good legacy and was among the largest airlines in the world until that date. On that fateful day, a fiasco led to a massive, negative public uproar on social media platforms and mass media. The airline needed to bump four passengers from UA flight 3411 into another flight to create space for four staff members (Puri et al., 2018). According to the crew, this was an emergency. Despite offering the passengers vouchers as compensation for four of them to leave the flight voluntarily, no one was willing. The crew, therefore, resulted to using a computer algorithm that would randomly select four passengers who would have to involuntarily depart and move to the next scheduled flight (Puri et al., 2018). Four passengers were selected and had to leave flight 3411. Though disappointed, three passengers left without struggle and objection, while the fourth refused to alight on the claims that he was a doctor and needed to attend to several patients the following day (Puri, 2018). Therefore, a Chicago department aviation officer forcefully dragged him from the flight undignifiedly, leaving him bruised and injured. According to Puri et al. (2018), the scenario was captured by onlookers and surfaced on social media within twenty-four hours after the incident, causing UA to lose a significant number of its customers and its good reputation. UA’s customers were completely dissatisfied with their operating procedures, stemming from that incident. According to Puri (2018), the company lost $250 million in value within two days after the incident.
There were several causes of service failures. First, forcibly dragging out an innocent passenger in the sight of onlookers was shameful. The fact that the man was even bloodied and bruised made it worse, increasing the heat and wrath of the public. Social platforms blazed with negative comments, condemning the unjust and ruthless act. Just like President Donald Trump suggested, it would have been better if they had increased the rate of compensation before they resulted in using such kind of force and disregard for an innocent passenger (Puri, 2018). Another cause of service failure was the delay of UA’s executives addressing the issue and apologizing. The executive officer apologized the following day after numerous negative posts about the incident surfaced on Twitter. In his statement, he used the term ‘re-accommodate,’ which Twitter users found to be significantly unacceptable and insensitive since how they treated the fourth passenger was nowhere near re-accommodation (Puri, 2018). According to Puri (2018), public relations experts felt that if the executive officer had released an apology promptly, the massive uproar and negative comments about UA would not have been as severe as it was. Further, the executive officer’s statement to the employees acknowledged that they had followed protocol by bumping the passengers and expressed that the fourth one was ‘disruptive’ and ‘belligerent’ (P...