This is our group project which topic is United Airlines Flight 3411 Incident (April 9th, 2017)

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This is our group project which topic is United Airlines Flight 3411 Incident (April 9th, 2017).

My part is to write introduction and conclusion.

Please read the works my team members have done and add the intro and conclusion/floater.

Breaking Down the Problem The main issue with United Airlines is the loss of trust they experienced from the incident that unfolded on April 7 . This leads to trying to determine what can be done in order to salvage that trust and bring customers back to their business. “Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this…I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right” (Grinberg, 2018) were the words spoken by CEO Oscar Munoz when the incident first broke into the news cycle. Not only did they act in a manner that severely altered the perception of the company in public, but the CEO’s response further hurt their image and their treatment of the incident. Additionally, the Chicago Department of Aviation released a statement that said, “the incident ‘was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the Department’” (Grinberg, 2018). When you are the sole defender of your employee’s actions, you are left in a predicament where you can choose to ignore the problem that was created or address it. th As public outrage continued, Munoz backtracked and acknowledged that the statement he released was completely wrong and did not actually address the issues the public was concerned about. We can definitely see the contrast in statements when you compare what he initially said, to what he followed it up with: “[T]hat first response was insensitive beyond belief. It did not represent how I felt…I messed up, plain and simple” (AP News, 2017). Acknowledging their wrongdoing was the first, correct, step that United Airlines took. However, because of this incident, U.A. were also criticized with not acting sooner in regard to the airline’s previous customer service complaints. This shows that the problems the company had were always an issue, but it took a situation of this magnitude for all of it to arise at the same time. Addressing this in their interview with The Associated Press, Munoz said, “clearly the event certainly accelerated our focus on this…we’ve been on a pretty nice trajectory with regards to our reliability, with regards to our friendliness” (AP News, 2017). At this point, Munoz has decided to act in a much more aggressive manner, but it is vital to address this in a way that is actually productive to solving the issues at hand. In the end, United Airlines must look at the incident and address the problems that were most impacted by it if they want the company to be back on track and with the customers on their side. This means they must address their issues with overbooking flights, bad customer service, and employee conduct. Alternative Solutions If we want customers to return to United Airlines, we need to incentivize them and give them reasons to return. One change that could be made is removing charges on luggage for the entire year. It is very common for potential customers to research companies that can offer discounts in areas they would like to save money on. According to USA Today (Swanston, B. 2017), companies like Cape Air and Southwest, offer free carry-on bags weighting in at fifty pounds or less. This approach can be taken by United Airlines, but they would likely risk having to raise ticket prices to compensate for the reduction in baggage fees. This can be seen as counterproductive because you risk creating pricing complaints from a customer base that is unhappy with the company as a whole, so this may not be as effective as we would want it to be. A second alternative to consider would be to re-train your employees. This could mean looking at your policies and creating standards of procedure that allow employees to address problems in ways that do not create solutions that make the customer feel at fault. When Starbucks employees incorrectly removed a black customer from one of their stores in 2018, they too had to look for solutions on how to fix the company’s image due to employees failing to approach a customer issue in a correct manner. Starbucks’ response was to implement a four-hour, company-wide training program the following day. This can be seen as a direct solution to a problem that stemmed from a lack of employee training. However, not all customers or employees saw this as a real solution. Time (2018) had an anonymous employee comment, “I was angry we had to educate people on how to not be racist”, which was a sentiment shared by the public as well. Comparing this to the United Airlines incident, one could also make that same statement if their sole approach to it was to re-train employees. Is it really necessary to re-train employees to not physically hurt a customer? Your solution cannot be to only re-train your employees, especially when the rest of the company came into question because of this incident. This approach also does nothing to address their issues with overbooking or their overall bad customer service. The third alternative that can be taken by United Airlines is to revisit their company policies as a whole and attempt to update them in a way that focuses on customer satisfaction. This means changing their policies on overbooking, customer service responses, and the manner in which employees act as a whole. While there is no guarantee that this can work, it does address more issues and centers around the customers’ concerns. One policy that anyone would suggest and was implemented was changing their policy on overbooking. The policy was quickly removed, and they no longer allowed their company to overbook in order to prevent this situation from happening again. This change reduced involuntary denied boarding by as much as 94% between April and May of that same year (BizJournal 2018). It is good to see this being implemented practically overnight, but they need more changes in order to bring everyone on board. United Airlines also needs to alter or create policies that allow for customers to make errors without taking any financial burdens from them. This can be things like not charging for cancellation fees or allowing refunds that would normally be rejected for isolated incidents. Small changes that can create positive impressions about the company are the most effective way to change the perception of United Airlines and bring them back to a positive light. Looking through these three alternatives, the most practical and effective solution would be the third. In order for the company to move past this event, they need to put customers at the top of their priority list. It is the customer who was hurt from all of this, so it should be the customer that receives the biggest benefits from this setback. Only through a direct approach can United Airlines fix the mess they created for themselves, anything else would be deemed as overly focused on keeping finances under control with no real lack of accountability or care for the trust they broke. Feasibility (Jonathan) To put this situation into perspective, we need to understand why some airlines oversell flights. They do this because they know that last minute events will always occur, such as flight delays for connecting flights, passengers not showing up, or even a cancellation of their tickets last minute. In the case that the flights do end up fully booked, they have two options, the voluntary or the involuntary flight bump (Schlappig, 2017). According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), “Overbooking is not illegal, and most airlines overbook their scheduled flights to a certain extent in order to compensate for ‘no-shows’” (Fly Rights 2021). In the best interests of the passengers, the DOT requires all the airlines to provide accommodations to the passengers who are bumped off the plane, whether it be in the form of cash, check, or physical accommodations. By understanding that it will be hard to change the policy of the government at hand, we can start looking at the feasible solutions that can ensure that an incident like this will not occur again. These solutions would be to not charge for additional luggage for a year, to re-train the employees, and focus on updating airline policies that soothe customer worries, The first solution discussed was to not charge for additional luggage for at least a year. This solution seems impractical at first, given that it seems to be rather vague with the time limit. The advantage that it does provide is for the passenger to receive some value out of flying with the airline provider. Across the 4.3 billion commercial fliers, a total of $28.1 billion dollars were paid in terms of carry on luggage (Reed, 2019). This makes it easier for them to travel with multiple bags without fear of breaking the bank. However, this may possibly be a focal point for the airlines, given that the spent $28.1 billion dollars also contributes to the $92.9 billion dollars of income that the airline generates (Reed, 2019). Not charging for baggage for at least a year would cost approximately 30% of revenues to go out the window, meaning that airlines could potentially be losing money. This may be a breaking point for many as they can’t afford to give up on one of their main sources of income. Additionally, it may not fully appease the consumers for a year and may not compensate for the main issue of being involuntarily kicked off a flight. The second solution discussed was retraining the employees. One of the main problems that spanned from this situation was how the employees handled the situation. They were more hostile than understanding and attempted to force Mr. Dao off the plane instead of trying to peacefully talk down the situation and handle it another way. As such, the best way to prevent this from happening again would be to retrain or change the basis of their policies. This ensures that the company puts in its best efforts to ensure incidents like these do not happen again. However, this isn’t necessarily a permanent solution as people can be quite unpredictable. Companies should be able to hire with the expectation that their employees will have the best of their values in mind. This isn’t always the case, with an example being of people who lost their jobs after participating in the invasion of the Capital riot. One of the people who infiltrated the capital building and was waving around a Trump flag was identified and fired by his company for participating in the riot (Baker, 2021). The company respects everyone’s right to free speech but the actions were not indicative of what their company stood for. This situation can be applied to the United situation, in which the actions and choices of the employees don’t stand for everyone in the company as a whole. They could be retrained with a refresher on guidelines but that doesn’t necessarily prevent future incidents from occurring like this. The third possible solution would be for United to focus on updating their policies to ensure that incidents like overbooking never happen again. The main problem that came out of this incident was that four crew members needed to occupy seats for a flight that was already fully booked. They did not take into consideration the thoughts and feelings of the people they were kicking out and put it all under the guise of providing a voucher for their next flight. While they were following policies and procedures, it was not very accommodating in terms of the passengers. As such, United should look to change its policies and implementations towards overbooking. An example of how they could issue such statements could be compared to that of Delta. Approximately a week after the United Airlines Flight 3411 incident occurred, Delta Airlines issued their own statement, stating that they were raising the compensation limits for voluntary denied boardings, in which gate agents may now offer up to $2,000 worth of vouchers (Schlappig, 2017). While this may solve the issue of overbooking, it certainly raises circumstances in which people are more likely to give up their seat. It is a noteworthy policy change, being that people will receive at least double the compensation if they give up their seat and don’t have to risk being forced off the plane for nothing. An example of a similar situation is provided to us by Alison Preiss. According to her, she was offered a $10,000 voucher for airline flights after her flight was overbooked (Preiss, 2019).This came after she was almost forced to sign an agreement wagering that she had “voluntarily” given up her seat, leading her to ask for the cash accommodation that she was entitled to by law. Between all three solutions, changing the policy’s at hand seem to be the best solution in terms of preventing the situation in the future. The reason that this incident occurred was because United overbooked their flight and no one was willing to give up their seat. This problem could be prevented if someone was more incentivized to reschedule their flight and voluntarily give up their position. While employees can always be trained to handle a situation, they will not always be able to control how the passengers feel. Giving people free stuff such as free carry-on and accommodating to their needs will make people feel more enticed to voluntarily give up their seat. Changing their policy doesn’t necessarily solve the main problem of overbooking at hand but it will most definitely quell the fears of people who could be potentially forced off. Rough Draft (use below info for assistance in progress report & feasibility report) Understandably, the public did not receive the incident in a positive manner. What made matters worse, was the approach that United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz took when responding to what had occurred. An internal memo obtained by CNN showed that Munoz firmly stood on the side of his employees. On the surface this may seem like the correct thing to do, but in this case it only worsened the situation. “Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this…I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right” (CNN 2018) were the words spoken by the CEO. It is hard to believe that someone named “U.S. Communicator of the Year” the previous month could release such a stance where violence was shown directly towards a paying customer. What also did not help was that the Chicago Department of Aviation also released a statement which mentioned that “the incident ‘was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officer are obviously not condoned by the Department’” (CNN 2018). As public outrage continued, Munoz backtracked and acknowledged that the statement he released was completely wrong and did not actually address the issues the public was concerned about. We can definitely see the contrast in statements when you compare what he initially said, to what he followed it up with: “[T]hat first response was insensitive beyond belief. It did not represent how I felt…I messed up, plain and simple” (AP 2017). Acknowledging their wrongdoing should always be the company’s response when it involves a customer experiencing something relating to their well-being Siding with your employees typically works best when the employees are in danger, but when they are the ones creating a dangerous situation, you can no longer side with them without risking heavy criticism from your customers. United Airlines was also criticized about not taking action sooner in regard to the airline’s customer service complaints. Addressing this in their interview with The Associated Press, Munoz said, “clearly the event certainly accelerated our focus on this…we’ve been on a pretty nice trajectory with regards to our reliability, with regards to our friendliness” (AP 2017). This approach caused their parent company United Continental Holdings to lose over $1 billion in its market value. While the follow up apology did help, the market value of the company was still down $250 million by April 30 (PR Week 2017). Clearly this had heavily impacted their th financial situation as a company and only drastic changes that could be accepted by the public could reverse the damage that had been done. The first change that was immediately implemented was their policy on overbooking. That was quickly removed, and they no longer allowed their company to overbook in order to prevent this situation from happening again, this reduced involuntary denied boarding by as much as 94% between April and May of that same year (BizJournal 2018). United Airlines also included a guideline that said they would “not ask law enforcement officers to remove customers from flights unless it is a matter of safety and security” (BizJournal 2018). Additionally, they would not allow for anyone who was already seated on the plane, to be involuntarily removed under the same guidelines that were previously mentioned. Other changes that were not related to the incident were also created in an effort to simply make the overall customer service experience better. When you are dealing with a PR incident of this magnitude, ensuring that other small details do not enhance the problem can always serve to help you further. United created an app that allowed “flight attendants and gate agents to compensate customers proactively on the spot when a disservice occurs” (BizJournal 2018). Additionally, United also adopted a “no-questions-asked policy on permanently lost bags. The carrier said it will pay customers $1,500 for the bag and its contents, no questions asked. (BizJournal 2018). These types of changes were not immediately needed but done so with the intention of ensuring that customers were being addressed in all manners. Again, when you are aiming to fix your company’s issues with their customers, it is absolutely vital that you are focusing on creating solutions that directly affect those problems. When you recall how much of a loss their market value experienced from the incident, it seemed inconceivable for them to bounce back from it. However, looking at their 2018 summary as a business, they did a great job with bringing back business to their doorstep. Proof of this can be seen through awards like “Top 100 Best Places to Work” being given to them by Glassdoor’s Employee Choice Awards or the fact that the company also handed out $87 million in bonuses to their employees from achieving performance goals throughout the year (United 2018). They also saw record-breaking performances in on-time departures, arrivals, and had some of the best performances overall during the holiday travel season (United 2018). Even with the horrific incident that occurred in April of 2017, United still managed to see an increase in revenue of $37.7 billion, which was 3.2% higher than their previous year (United 2018). This can only prove that with the right approach, a company has the ability to bounce back from the issues that they are presented with. Comparing this to their initial approach, you can see the stark differences in how each approach drastically differs in result. We can learn from United’s mistakes and understand that every situation requires a different form of action. Understanding this can help companies navigate through their issues in more appropriate manners and allow them to exit their problems better than how they entered them. Progress and Activity Report United Airlines Ceo Oscar Munoz made the decision to come out with a statement defending his employee’s instead of addressing the actual issue with overbooking of flights, the physical altercation between the passenger and security officers, and even criticized the passenger. References Associated Press. (2017, April 16). United changes policy, crew can’t displace seated passengers. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiunited-airlines-policy-change-20170416-story.html Czarnecki, S. (2021, April 30). Timeline of a crisis: United Airlines. PR Week. https://www.prweek.com/article/1435619/timeline-crisis-united-airlines Grinberg, C. C. Z. A. E. (2018, April 10). Passenger dragged off overbook United flight. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/10/travel/passenger-removedunited-flight-trnd Kottasova, I. (2017, April 11). United loses $250 million of its market value. CNNMoney. https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/11/investing/united-airlinesstock-passenger-flight-video/ Lazare, L. (2018, April 6). United Airlines reflects on changes since man-draggedfrom-plane incident. Chicago Business Journal. https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2018/04/04/united-airlinesreflects-on-changes-since-dao.html United CEO: I “messed up” with initial response to incident. (2017, April 27). AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/20ca73891d43436781acaeecb083d6cd United Newsroom. (2020, November 2). United Airlines Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2017 Performance. United Hub. https://hub.united.com/unitedairlines-reports-fourth-quarter-2567373628.html Jonathan’s references: Baker, S. (2021, January 8). A Trump supporter was fired from his job at a Maryland marketing company after he wore his work lanyard to storm the Capitol. Yahoo! News. https://news.yahoo.com/trump-supporter-fired-job-maryland-111332279.html. Fly Rights. U.S. Department of Transportation. (2021). https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights#Overbooking. Preiss, A. M. (2019, August 2). I got a $10,000 voucher for being bumped off a United flight - thanks to consumer protection laws. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-got-10-000-voucher-being-bumped-unitedflight-thanks-ncna860951. Reed, D. (2019, May 1). Your Baggage Alone Is Worth $28.1 Billion A Year To The World's Airlines. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2019/05/01/yourbaggage-alone-is-worth-281-billion-a-year-to-the-worlds-airlines/?sh=480dce962298. Schlappig, B. (2017, April 14). Wow: Delta Significantly Raises Voluntary Denied Boarding Compensation Limits. One Mile at a Time. https://onemileatatime.com/deltadenied-boarding-compensation/. Schlappig, B. (2017, April 16). What Are Your Rights If You Get Bumped From A Flight? One Mile at a Time. https://onemileatatime.com/what-are-your-rights-if-youget-bumped-from-a-flight/.