Reflection on Social Media Case 12: United Breaks Guitars

United Airlines does not have a comfortable past or present with the American public.  As you can see in this link their most recent scandal is still getting a lot of negative press. United Airlines forcibly removed a passenger from a plane in order to make room for more of their crew members that were needed in another airport. Click here to see the video of the man being pulled from the plane and watch as CNN discusses how much he received in the court settlement. They were not able to disclose how much he was given, but they said that it was easily in the millions. What was the reason United awarded this man the requested settlement? I think it is because they were concerned with their negative press and not so much because they did the wrong thing. When we think back to the old problems with the damaged guitars you can see that they didn’t offer to pay for the damage until the airline started receiving excessive bad press. And by the time they did offer to pay for the damages, it was too late. Too late meaning that the damage to the company’s reputation was already done and they couldn’t fix it by giving the client the original monetary value. United is going to struggle with bad press for a long time. It’s interesting to see that when another incident happens it is not independent from their past wrongdoings. The public immediately compares it to whatever they have done in the past. If you look to the comments on the YouTube video you can see people saying “is anyone here to re watch after that guy was dragged off of the plane?” The bad press for United is building off of what has happened previously in the company. This will be a long term problem for them to deal with for sure.