Guest post
A couple of weeks' ago, we saw an incident occur within the American airline group United take place, only
made worse by the fact that many of the passengers proceeded to film the ordeal
on their mobile phones, then sharing it with the world, and the press of
course.
The video
appeared to show a male passenger being literally grabbed and pulled out of his
seat, then physically dragged down the aisle of the aircraft, along with
screaming and shouting from himself and his fellow passengers. Watching the
short video the next morning all over UK news was one of those open mouth
moments, I really was speechless. The man was being treated like a criminal, he
was actually a doctor and passenger of the flight from Chicago to Louisville.
The
real reason?
Because the plane was overbooked and the airline needed to free
seats.
It really was a PR disaster, in more ways than one... or perhaps it was a triumph
for others?
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| Source |
The days
that followed were really interesting, particularly on social media. There were
multiple photos or what are now known as memes, basically taking a joke at
United’s expense, people were not happy and this made me wonder if a boycott of
United Airlines would appear sometime in the future. If they keep having this
kind of negative press than sadly it could be a possibility and tarnish their
reputation even more so than it currently is.
But PR
disasters like this aren’t actually bad for everyone; many parties can actually
benefit from such a scenario.
As soon as the bad press came out rival airlines
such as American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and many others would most likely
have had a laugh and joke in the office that morning, this was a chance to
tempt existent United customers to jump ship, or plane, and book their future
tickets with them at a more affordable rate. Many airlines along with the public
poked fun at the airline, even using the hashtag United on their posts when
talking about the services they offer. The Arabian airline Emirates was an
example of this and sent the following tweet: “Fly the friendly skies with a
real airline.” A clear dig and insult towards the day’s previous disaster at
United.
This ultimately shows that when something like this happens there are
some clear losers, but also winners. From a consumer point of view, I can
definitely say something like this would put me off booking any future flights
with them, it certainly tarnishes their public image and the bosses over at
United and more importantly their PR people will need to have lots of meetings
and a big think with what they can do to turn this one around, it certainly
won’t be easy.
Whoever says
that working in PR is easy, it really isn’t. The PR team over at United
literally had their worst nightmares come true; you’d seriously need to think
of a new strategy or story in order to turn things around.
Creating stories on
running free tickets and competitions would be a good start and something that
could immediately be sent to the press, it couldn’t change the current
circumstances but could ease the blow slightly. Other ideas could be creating
some sort of human interest story by featuring a US celebrity perhaps?
Whatever
the PR people over at United come up with over the following weeks and months
it will take much longer to fade from the minds of the American, British, and
worldwide public.
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