United Airlines Keeps Shooting Itself in the PR Foot with One Flub after Another
The Latest Incidents Involve Killing One Dog and Shipping Two Others to the Wrong Place
Andrew Blum, Principal, AJB CommunicationsIt's been a strange and crisis-filled 12 months for United Airlines and its PR people.First it was the leggings incident where United Airlines played fashion police and denied boarding to two girls for not dressing properly. Then the airline decided to kick a passenger off a plane and had Chicago airport police drag him down the aisle. And now it is the incidents with the dogs. Oh, and there was also the death of a rabbit last year that United was preparing to transport on a connecting flight.
Who is running this airline? What are their policies? And how many times can the PR and communications group at United be asked to clean up these messes? It's no easy task when you are faced with viral hashtags like #Unitedkillsdogs.Just like the man dragged off the plane – and his subsequent legal action – United's treatment of the dogs is getting lots of news media and social media attention. No surprise here – a flight attendant told a dog owner to put one dog in the overhead bin while in its animal carrier; the dog later died. Two other dogs on two separate flights were shipped to the wrong airports.According to PR Week and other media reports, three times the number of animals died on United flights in 2017, compared with all the other airlines combined. So it's not an isolated incident.United apologized yet again and announced a new policy to issue brightly colored tags to passengers traveling with pets so they can be easily identified by staff. That may not be enough.Media reports also speculated about the incidents prompting new questions on the job security of United CEO Oscar Munoz. Last year he had been named Communicator of the Year by PR Week but after the passenger dragging brouhaha, the publication said it was mistaken in making the award due to the poor handling of that incident by Munoz.All of this has a cumulative PR effect: these mishaps anger passengers and pet owners, they result in lawsuits, they lead to drops in its stock price, and they put the airline under congressional and investigative scrutiny.United needs a total revamp of its policies. Its PR group, if they are not already doing this, should hold weekly crisis PR drills to be prepared for just about any crisis. Who knows what the next crisis will be?In one of my previous columns for CommPRO.biz about United and its PR problems I said the massive negative publicity may wane over the time but United has left the industry with a huge black eye over treatment of customers.Face it, not a lot of people like to fly these days for a host of reasons. If United keeps up its poor track record, it may be at the bottom of the list for passengers booking travel and may face boycotts.United needs to clean this all up. Their brand depends on it more than ever. [author]About the Author: Andrew Blum is a PR consultant and media trainer and principal of AJB Communications. He has directed PR for professional services and financial services firms, NGOs, agencies and other clients. As a PR executive, and formerly as a journalist, he has been involved on both sides of the media aisle in some of the most media intensive crises of the past 25 years. Contact him at ajbcomms@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @ajbcomms [/author]
