Right before the united airlines plane left the Chicago O'Hare Airport, Sunday night witnessed the angry outburst of public comments across various social media platforms. It started with the overbooking of flight 3411 on United Airlines. With four extra passengers, the flight crew asked if anyone would consider giving up their seats for other passengers. Since no one volunteered to step down, the airlines management decided to forcibly remove four passengers by random selection. Two of the selected people were an Asian couple.
The two views and the truth
The 69-year-old husband claimed himself to be a doctor who had to attend to his patients the very next day. He knew that this flight journey was crucial for him and so he refused to give up his seat. Following his claims of being a medical practitioner and "stubbornness" to let go of his rightful seat, the security officers knocked him down unconscious with an armrest before he was dragged across the plane to the entry door. It became worse when he told the security officer, "Kill me" while the blood kept gushing out of his face. It is interesting to notice that there are two ways to look at this particular segment when the doctor got hurt by the armrest. There is a widespread now-termed controversy that argues that the doctor had accidentally hurt himself on the arm rest.
The reality is in stark contrast to this view: the doctor was intentionally assaulted and as a result got hurt due to the placing of the arm rest.
Criticism from the public
Many comments on this issue regarded this practice as inhuman and that a customer-oriented service industry cannot act in such a manner. The fact that the man was a doctor who had patients waiting for him the next day made the already enraged public ablaze with harsh comments against the organization in almost every social networking site.
Currently, UnitedAirlines is one of the most trending hashtags on Facebook. Twitter did do its part as the topic is already blown out of proportion with the outraged tweets accompanied with the hashtag #dontflyunited.
Current news headlines claim that the United Airlines organization has suspended the officers who were responsible for the ill-treatment.
They did not state any other comment about the chilling episode. The post-crisis stage is very similar to what Toyota did a few years ago during the Lexus car crash that killed a family of four. Toyota did not explicitly admit that there was something wrong with the technical part of the engine and airbags and instead refused to find the whole issue faulty.
Responsibility is taken but whether it is satisfactory or not is the question
The top management of Toyota claimed to take responsibility only after multiple catastrophic incidents. It does seem to be that United Airlines is following suit as of now since they did not take responsibility for the overbooking. However, the United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz apologized a few hours ago, claiming that the entire incident has been an upsetting event for everyone within the organization.
Also, he went on to state that they are still conducting their very own detailed reports on what happened, and that they would resolve this conflict.
While he did apologize, the question lies in whether they take responsibility or whether they will single out a particular part or group within the company and hold them responsible. As a company, they have failed to maintain their unity as they did declare that Aviation department security officers -- who are responsible for controlling the decorum and keeping everything under control inside the security cordon at the airport -- are solely responsible for the event.