On April 9th, 2017, the passenger jet leaving from Chicago for Louisville, Kentucky

became the scene of the single greatest PR debacle in the history of United Airlines.

The airline needed four seats (on an already overbooked flight) for United staff who
were to be on Louisville to staff a plane there. No one volunteered to give up the seats,
so if was decided that some of the passengers had to be bumped off the flight. Dr Dao,
the passenger in question, initially volunteered, but when he found out the next flight
wasnt until Monday, sat back down. Upon his refusal, the United staff called the airport
security, who dragged the doctor from the seat and out of the plane. According to
another passenger, at one point the man hit his head on an armrest. Videos of the
incident blood streaming down his face.

After the videos went viral, calls to boycott United Airlines ensued. Although situations
don't usually escalate to this level, an expert commented that airlines typically reserve
the right in their legal agreements with passengers to remove anyone from a flight and
that it happens routinely.

Airlines must first request that volunteers give up their seats in exchange for tickets on
an alternative flight plus compensation, to be determined by the airline.

If an airline cant get enough passengers to volunteer, the airlines can remove
passengers involuntarily. Under Uniteds contract of carriage rules, the carrier may
select passengers to remove from an overbooked flight based on a passengers fare
class, itinerary, status of frequent flyer program membership, and the time in which the
passenger presented him/herself for check-in with advanced seat assignment.

The problem here, however, isnt that the flight was overbooked, or that a passenger
had to leave the flight involuntarily. The problem is that the United employees did not
have the latitude to make on the spot decisions themselves: they instead chose to
pass the buck by calling the airport security, which allowed the situation to escalate.
The pilot of the flight in question, Patrick Smith, thinks so as well, "There is no reason
that an overbooked flight should result in the forced, physical removal of a passenger by
law enforcement." He also added that airline cultures sometimes discourage creative
thinking.
 I hate saying it, but airline culture and training is often such that thinking creatively,
and the devising of proverbial outside-the-box solutions, is almost actively discouraged.
Everything is scripted, regimented, rote and procedural, and employees are often so
afraid of being reprimanded for going against the letter of the law, or for making a bad
decision not to mention chronically being pressed for time that they wont make a
decision at all, or will gladly hand the matter along to somebody else who can then take
responsibility. Workers are deterred from thinking creatively exactly when they need to.

According to Smith, the airline staff had reached a point where they simply had no
idea what to do, and no one from the staff was brave, or resourceful enough to come
up with a solution.

Airlines are allowed to offer up to $1350 in compensation to passengers in an

overbooked flight. However, on the day of the incident, the staff stopped soliciting for
volunteers as the reward went up to $800.

According to an 11 page report by United, Agents did not have the authority to act
independently and authorize higher levels of compensation or provide other modes of
transportation and that one of its failures was providing insufficient employee
training and empowerment to handle a situation like this.

It seems that the policies got in the way of United Airlines values, and procedure in the
way of doing what is right.

As a pre-emptive measure, what can Q-nited Airlines to in order to avoid such

escalations in an industry that seems to be so inflexible?