Blog 9: United Social Media Nightmare

I'm sure by now most, if not all, of us have seen the horrible viral video of a doctor being forcibly dragged off of a United Airlines flight this week. United Airlines had overbooked a flight and when no one offered to give up their seat, people were randomly selected to be removed from the flight. One of these randomly selected passengers was a doctor who had patients to see the next morning, so he refused to give up his seat. Fast forward to security yanking him out of his seat and dragging his body up the aisle of the plane. Unfortunately for United, this entire interaction was filmed by a passenger and this video now has over 1 million views on YouTube. This horrid video comes just a few weeks after United was in the news for not allowing two passengers to board a flight because they were wearing leggings.

The worst part of these events is United's reaction. The following tweets show how United responded to the leggings incident:

Then, just this week, United responded to the forced removal of their passenger by tweeting:

People are very upset by this response because United doesn't even address the video. United doesn't take responsibility or apologize for either event, and instead just blames their policies for what had occurred. The airline should have used social media to its advantage and issued a quick and appropriate reaction, but instead they have received even further backlash due to the lack of response.