Oscar Munoz, CEO of United Airlines, added a word to our everyday vocabulary — Re-Accommodate. Translation: You will get off the plane when we tell you to, or we will bloody you and drag you out kicking and screaming. We have ALL seen the video of an Asian Doctor being forced off a plane, and physically abused, because the flight was overbooked, and they had to fly United employees to their destination.
My economist friend Robert B. weighed in; “The simple solution was to keep upping the offer to discover the passengers with the lowest cost of being bumped. Certainly not the physician guy they ‘randomly’ picked. This suggests that as flyers, when we look to book on United, we need to factor in the random probability of not reaching our destination as scheduled. It is reasonable for United to gamble on overbooking — but it is THEIR gamble, not the customers”. Well said Robert!
United’s stock price took a beating. The company lost close to a billion dollars in value. The public relations nightmare continues, social media is buzzing with the fallout, and late night hosts, like Jimmy Kimmel, are having a field day.
I certainly will not fly United again. I think you shouldn’t either.
About Hemant Rustogi