PR Disaster

By now, if you haven’t seen this video and story, you don’t pay attention to news.  It is a PR disaster of United Airlines’ own making.  The first error was overbooking the flight. The second was forcibly removing a passenger from the plane in front of passengers’ cameras.  The third was dragging the passenger down the floor.  United’s CEO was apologetic but it is going to take a lot more than words to wipe the video from people’s minds.  This comes under the heading of “what were they thinking.”  Surely there had to be a better way.  Putting the passenger in a transport chair.  Carrying the passenger off the plane.  The employee who did the dragging was imposing his will on the passenger and not thinking about the consequences.  At the very least, the employee needs training and for that matter, all of United’s gate agents and security need rules and equipment to prevent this from happening again.