The fiasco went viral after someone posted the incident online.
Most people have a love-hate relationship with the word viral. Business people want their products or services to go viral. Marketers want their advertisement or event to go viral. Internet singer wannabes want their Youtube videos to go viral. Bloggers want their next post to go viral. But there's no way that you can manage it no matter how well you execute the plan. And sometimes the reason you want it to go viral goes viral for the wrong reason or in totally unforeseen directions.
The CEO issued three statements on the incident only to land himself and the company into a public relation disaster which will probably becomes a classic case study.
The snowball effect is so great that even several US Senators have ordered a full review of the incident and a full account report to be submitted. Even US President, Donald Trump, has something to say.
It was reported the company's shares slide by 6.3% and lost $1.4 billion in a day.
The incident has also led to a public outcry to boycott United Airlines and a petition.
There were speculations that the man was treated this way because of his race. Many Asians were outraged and also call to boycott the airline. The fact that the guy is a Vietnamese-American does not stop China's citizens from erupting in anger and commenting on US double standards in treating people and human rights stand. Over 100,000 signed a #ChineseLivesMatter petition on the whitehouse.gov petitions page calling for a federal investigation into the incident.
In a day, the man's identity, occupation, personal history (he was a poker champion previously), his brush with law (his medical license was suspended for trading prescription drugs for secret gay sex) were all over the net.
There's also finger pointing. Some say it's the fault of security at airport. Some say the airline should be responsible. And some say it's the fault of the passenger who shot the video.
What's interesting for me is not how the CEO is going to salvage the PR flop, how much the airline is going to suffer from this incident, what compensation is the airline giving the man, his private live or who's right and who's wrong.
I'm sure many of us suddenly become aware of the word "overbooked flights."
Do a google search now and you will see major news sites like CNBC, CNN, Fox, BBC talking about overbooked flight and why are airlines doing it (in economic sense and using probability), how they manage an overbooked flight, how to avoid getting bumped from an overbooked flight and even what are some of the incentives you may get for volunteering to get off an overbooked flight.
I'm not sure about the rest of you but I've never come across this term and never (should be haven't) encounter this in all my travels.
It turns out that when you purchase an air ticket, you are just buying a journey from one point to another. Even though you've selected the date, time of flight or even pay for a specific seat, the seat is not guaranteed. Airlines have all the small prints to protect themselves which none of us will ever read.
Paying does not mean you will be getting.
By the way, I've also found out that there may be laws governing taking video inside a plane.