Jagboi

Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

JHIN

Hey hey ho ho Munoz has GOT TO GO!

And Id be glad to replace him at half his salary and demonstrate how to run a fir profit company that has morals values and a social conscience with compassion for humanity!

I'll start by making all leaders take adopt and pass a servant leader course! Those who fail are terminated.

spin88

And more to the point, it was Jeff and his c grade team, that set a hard cap of $800 in vouchers before tossing people off the plane. As oscar said in his initial tone def response to employees, the ga was following policy.

While some people want to blame the employees, the policy, and write ups for not following it, was created by smisik's team. This was a pr disaster just waiting to happen, that it involves blood, an md, and a 69 year old Chinese guy, with a video. One now viewed by 330 million Chinese, well that is just Gravy for Ua's competitors,

fly747first

Easier said than done. The huge irony is that UA's board of directors think they can maximize their returns by treating customers like inconveniences and they would pretty much get rid of any executive who tries to reverse this fallacy because in their eyes, there is no value to customer service. If they had smart people working for them, perhaps truly talented number crunchers, maybe they could get away with it, but when UA is well-known for attracting untalented staff, mainly C students from Embry-Riddle and third-tier schools responsible for forecasts that by Smisek's own admission were often not accurate, you have a serious issue.

I don't think Munoz is necessarily a bad CEO, yet the reality is that unless people truly start to boycott UA and profits significantly decrease, the board of directors won't really allow him to change much.

Remember, this is the airline that has been hiring executives from Allegiant... because horrible ultra low-cost carriers that can't even make flights to Hawaii profitable really know how to run a global enterprise. lol

Kamalaasaa

Don't be too sure this won't affect United.

Nobody saw this coming for Target:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/target-ceo-blindsided-by-boycott-2017-4

featheroleather

same place you got your stats.

TennisNoob

I disliked Oscar from the start. Dislike him even more after this fiasco. Bottom line is Oscar is the one that needs to go to get this off the radar. I don't think this will be let go that easily and will remain in the media for some time.

GrayAnderson

I know we've all made the point that, to be blunt, the US customer is cheap. However, there was an example made earlier about "If someone sees that a ticket to Orlando is $300 cheaper..." without really thinking through the implication there, revenue wise: If United has to discount fares $1/passenger on average, that's still $140m/yr. Yes, seats will still be filled and scads of flights won't be going out empty...but if United has to discount its tickets by even a small amount to get folks onboard vis-a-vis the competition and/or takes a small hit to load factors as a result, that's still going to do some damage. Knock $5 off your average ticket price and that's a third of United's net income last year. And yes, a small hit to load factors could really send United's net income reeling, since a lot of those tickets lost are likely to be higher-bucket tickets.

Another question: How many markets does UA effectively only compete with one other airline in? I ask because this has swelled up badly enough that, with numerous other airlines "throwing shade", I wonder if there won't be enough incentive for some other airlines to consider "going in for the kill" and sustaining attacks on United alongside aggressive fare competition in an attempt to hammer them out. Especially if they could hammer United out of a given market, ensuring an overall negative narrative for United in light of their *ahem* talent in generating one for themselves.

overdahill

Oh Bo.....myself having been a top level on over 10 airlines and million miler on Delta and American.


I recall that on a Detroit to Dulles, oversold they tried to muscle a gentlemen off the plane in a fairly similar circumstance. He protested that he had a legal right of necessity to be on the plane. He sat next to me. I was privileged. He was not. Without verifying his complaint, the did try to remove him. I recollect he used the old flip phone for a call. He was a US senator going to DC. I heard that there were severe criminal charges filed. Never any press.

Now passengers in my opinion, retain all there civil rights. But, they may yield to rights of others in case of welfare and safety. I have on the other hand never seen any airline or airport assign charges for passenger abuse.
If it costs, one may think twice. Create a problem, you will pay an may be banned not only on the one airline, but US wide. Same for serious airline and also cruise lines abuses. Dehydration kills, they forget that!

The punishment fits the crime on both sides of the net.

You see the wide emergency exit row, the lights illuminating the rows. I used to fly with the man and watched him testify before congress and over the FAA disapproval. He was P. Bergman and co producer on 20-20..

sinoflyer

Even a high school club debater knows how to look up sources before accusing someone of making up stats. You have no idea what defines "frequent flyer." Nor do you understand that "20% frequent flyers generating 80% revenues" is meaningless without knowing how many of them are elite/non-elite, or if they are silver/gold/platinum...

I explained in this recent thread that up to 95% of the passengers may be non-elite, and that they generate about 75% of the airlines' revenues. It's an undeniable fact that non-elite passengers are the bread-and-butter of all U.S. air carriers. An airline that treats non-elite pax like the scourge, like UA has been doing, is doing so at its own peril.

Beginning with Tilton, UA had adopted increasingly antagonistic attitudes toward general MP members in favor of the so-called "elites." The blowback directed at UA now is coming from the long lines of pax who remember being belittled and mistreated by UA's handling of IDBs, irrops, etc. WN, on the other hand, made its success by targeting the 95%. DL got smart too, post-bankruptcy, and learned that there are many 2-4x per year flyers, not enough for "elite," who also buy expensive fares. If Munoz desires to right the UA ship, he should start by looking at where most of his company's revenues are coming from.

wolf72

1. Sack Munoz.
2. Sack the person in charge of communications & PR
3. Re-look policies on over booking & compensation packages
4. Work with other airliners to move passengers displaced due to overbookings but correctly award the passenger the mileage they should have gotten otherwise on the loyalty program and credit them additional mileage as a "i am sorry."
5. Re-train GA and FA's on basic customer service and learn to treat customers as paying guests
6. Sack the person in charge of flight operations who opted to send the 4 crew members on that flight that resulted in the injuries to the doctor.

AYEBREH

The passenger already boarded any one defending this .... is ridiculous.
Contracts of carraige and overbooking need to be vastly regulated.
A nyone accepting the status quo is stupid

Oh there will be sales. They dont fly out of jfk to asia anyway and the places they do, have competitors. they'll lose a good chunk of the asian ff,immigrant flyers,which from my experience is mostly packed with native asian people in coach whose media outlets are all reporting on this

Flagonwithdragon

I fly to China 8-10 times a year on United. Now I have to answer my clients' and friend's questions about why Dao was chosen to be bumped. If things go badly I will need to switch airlines to avoid being associated with the unfriendly skies. People are sensitive about this and China (United's growth market!) offers people in China many choices of airlines to the USA. A Chinese boycott is much more likely and much more costly than an American one. Sacking Munoz may be a necessary step.

bryanb

There is some debate as to whether the airline really has cover under the law, because this was not an oversold flight and therefore IDB rules do not apply. Even if IDB protections apply, airlines should not use the law to determine the limits of their actions.

Yes, some people are more special than others. Lotteries are a form of rationing that assume that everyone in a market is equal. That's economically inefficient. Some people do value their seats more than others, regardless of their reasons for doing so. The FAA needs to remove protectionist IDB rules, and let the market decide the price for paying passengers to give up their seats.

Even if you disagree with all of the above, being proactive would've involved resolving the situation before everyone was seated. Not making an offer of inadequate compensation, and coercing people into taking it under threat of (or actual) force.

spin88

Bingo1. 330 million views of the video in china, and the Chinese press hyping 'united beats chinese". Kiss those routes to secondary Chinese cities goodbye. They will be gone in 6 months.