Why my very best friend (of `30 years) is my very best friend @united @RepublicAirline #flight3411 #DrDavidDao





Like many, I've been watching the ugliness of the public's reaction to
the ugly event by United's employees, right up to their CEO. I have
a range of thoughts.

To all airlines C-level folks:

Those customers you keep referring to? Those are people. Like you, or
those board members around you, or your family, or those workers on
the planes, or those workers buried in call centers, or the middle
managers you make resolve your conflicting policies, or the outsourced
workers you use to avoid paying benefits. The general public does not
believe you understand this, mostly from your herculean efforts to
give them less (less space, less service, less straightforwardness,
less dignity, less power, less voice, less choices) at any cost. At
some point, you have to draw a line at which you say, "this is not how
a person should be treated by anybody or any institution" and _never_
cross that line -- hopefully, because you actually give a damn, rather
just as a PR or legal concern. And don't try to weasel by drawing a
bunch of lines, rationalizing that interpretting one policy allows you
to stand on one side of a line, then interpretting another policy to
stand against a different line. Even better: give people a chance to
improve their lives for having used your service, rather than the
current feeling of dread that you'll have found a new way to define
"accomodate", because now you can make another $5 off them. There are
a lot of people making noises about how they feel unsafe after the
forced removal of passengers, but the feeling of lack of safety, and
the anger boiling over, is from this dehumanizing you've been engaging
in for several decades.

You can't treat customers as nothing more than terrible legalistic
obligations after you've gotten the money. You have angered people,
_earning_ terrible (frequently negative) approval ratings for your
industry as a whole, and that makes any sort of "easy" or "quick"
recovery impossible from any negative event of any magnitude, and it
blunts all positive events. If you hadn't spent so much effort over
such a long period of time making people feel cheated and abused, you
would have been able to write this off as a one-time awful event which
can be fixed by dealing with a few personnel, as opposed to undamming
the frustration and anger of millions of passenger miles all over your
corporate image. Note: calling all the passengers on your planes liars
when they witness truly bad events (cf. Munoz's responses during the
first 48 hours) was indefensible in the past, but now is undefendable.

Overbooking is a gamble, where you are the house (so says your 80+
page "ticket"). But it's clear the airlines don't want to pay off
losing bets. So you use the power of lawyers to take all the money,
and take away any voice of the people. If people are denied your
so-much-improved on-time performance, they stop placing the bets.
Which leads to...

Please stop pretending you're not manipulating the numbers for on-time
performance, cancellations, bounces, involuntary removals, customer
service failures, etc. Lying to yourself is amazingly foolish, and at
some point the public finds you untrustworthy. I know of a flight
where the passengers were told it wasn't going to fly, but the flight
explicitly wasn't cancelled, but it just wasn't going to fly. Your
statistics are suspect, at best, and far too likely encroaching on
blatant lies. The great majority of the public isn't stupid, but they
are very tired, and have given up on you, because it's clear to them
you don't care what the numbers actually mean, just that you can run
off to the PR office and make happy-sounding headlines to keep the
financial press in (cheap) production.

You have a huge problem using the financial results of your policies
to punish the front line workers. Sure, you "empower" your front line
workers to make customers not unhappy, but it is clear that you don't
like the financial impact of those needs conflicting with the
(undoubtedly brilliant) operational policies you create oh-so-far-away
at headquarters. Basically, you're using financial pressures on middle
management to undo any freedoms you think you're giving your
customer-facing workers. A blatant example: your customer service is
plainly terrible, there are too many stories online which contradict
any use of in-house generated numbers. It's clear you have no idea
that the numbers you are being fed are a result of (now) cutting off
people on the phone, (now) reinterpretting words to mean "satisfied",
(now) not counting conveniently "lost" complaints, not differentiating
between basic customer needs and wants vs. absurd demands of unethical
customers, etc. You have middle managers making decisions and
statistics to meet your financial expectations over your (hopefully)
service improvement desires. As a result, the numbers are improving,
but without meaning. So the service level is only incrementally better
-- maybe, but you can't tell. This means you are wasting your money,
and your reputation, for a mere PR release about "better numbers."

Also, I think you underestimate how all of this hurts your ability to
hire better-than-average workers. The very people who could help drag
you sorry butts forward.

To the unions with workers involved in United's event:

Where the hell have you been? Do you have a gag order as a part of
your labor agreements and you have no guts to go ask for a temporary
release of that clause? Or are you just as uncaring as the C-level
folks in the decision-making processes? For all the bleats about how
the little people matter, you have failed completely to demonstrate
(pun kind of intentional) you really, honestly believe that. Do you
feel any responsibility? I honestly don't know at this time.

I have seen a very small number of your members making
almost-non-tone-deaf statements, but even those have been a failure.
Your members are trying to treat this as a one-off event, but that
flies in the face of the dozens-of-thousands complaints now spilling
out in all the anger.

You've got a major problem on your hands, especially if you want
the public's support at the next negotiations session.

To the financial press:

I am appalled at your behavior.

This is the story of a person (see the paragraph above) who could have
been killed. This is a story laying bare the results of an industry,
and policing authority, and elected and appointed officials, which
have lost all sense of perspective, in their rush to not be challanged
in their authority, nor display any responsibility to the democratic
republic -- you know that pesky rest of the public which their power,
and yours, actually rests on. You know, some of the mugs you are
trying to con into seeing your ads; again, see the previous discussion
of "customer" vs. "people", it applies equally to you.

Your entire coverage has been an ugly, predatory morass of "it doesn't
matter, because the stock price won't be badly affected," and "trading
customers not taking advantange of this buying opportunity are
stupid," and "look at the curious viral behavior we can attach our
name to," and "we have experts!" There has been a rush of (supposed)
experts getting their names attached to the discussion of the PR mess;
a few with interesting things to say, but a lot of (mostly
incorrect) blather otherwise. But all published equally to fill column
inches, pages, tweet counts, etc., so you can keep customers clicking.

Not one story (that I've seen) about how the costs of people doing
business now includes their dignity or health, and an industry might
be crossing a line, not just as a PR event. Not one story (that I've
seen) about how the automated traders have no sense of humanity, so
that day's report improved operation margins are infinitely more
important than, you know, the humans lives which are consumed getting
to those margins. Not one story (that I've seen) which shows you
understand how avaricious underminings of capitalism are actually
hurting customers -- you know, people.

Pathetic is the very least word I can come up with, but I'm going back
to appalled.

I do realize you are the financial, not general, press, with a
specific viewpoint and specfic audience, but at some point you need to
rethink how you cover stories when lives are on the line or moral
questions are raised. There has to be a better balance. Your
out-of-touch attitudes now seem awfully familiar to the very stories
you are covering. This should worry you.

To the general press:

What a clear demonstration why your industry is failing.

So many, many stories which can't be bothered to do basic research
into petty details: the actual people, the actual organizations
involved and how those are structured to each other, the actual legal
principles involved, the timeline, etc. The inability to distinguish
between 2 people with the same name, because 1 is conveniently
salacious. The complete lack of discussion of the regional carrier's
equipment but with United's authority. The insistence that this is an
overbooking situation, frequently with distracting "who overbooks the
most/least" lists. Misapplying the work "overbook" even when the
article demonstrates the correct idea of deplaning (or forced removal,
whichever). Misapplying the word "apology" instead of "response".
Demonstrating the any reporter read the carriage contract. Finding
(self-proclaimed) experts who are either intelligence-insultingly not,
or so badly mis-quoted that their reputation is ruined. The inability
to not intermingle United's behavior with (supposed) salacious details
of the victim's past, implying the former was in any way tied to the
latter. Et alia. Editors and reporters reading this who recognize
any of the previous sentences, either you have failed basic journalism
with this story or you have been reading your fellow workers' output
and have been embarrassed.

Do I need to discuss the obvious rush-to-print over accuracy during
the first 24 hours? I hope not, because most articles became
insultingly poor after facts were published.

The fawning over United's press releases I found particularly grating.
The responses with Munoz's name at the bottom were short enough to be
printed whole and still have plenty of room for reporter-added
context, but were often reduced to 3 short clauses for quotes then
poorly paraphrased. It seems to me there was an uncomfortable attempt
to make reporting convenient for United; not soft-balling, but
certainly working closely with United's PR team, without
disclosure. Because of your lack of skill, I'm left without an
understanding of what Munoz understands. I'm not asking for a
combative stance, because that is just as useless, but one of
curiosity and inquiry. If I'm feeling more conspiratorial, I fear
your editors are close friends with high-placed United folks (again,
without disclosure) and have been orchestrating a dance I would find
insulting. Part of this concern comes from a clear carrying forward
of uses of words such as "customer" instead of "person", but that
could be plain laziness on your part.

I have an unpleasant feeling that without the video getting "likes"
first, at most a few of you would have paraphrased United's first
release, then promptly discarded the story. Otherwise, you would have
had to do things like call and gather witness stories, ask
embarrassing questions of your boss's friends, verify timelines -- you
know, journalism. My feeling is based on how little of this you have
demonstrated doing up to now. You have fed off each other, reprinted
some tweets, occasionally added some opinion or (supposed) expert
quotes, added PR quotes, and otherwise been generally lazy. All to
much indistinguishable from a mediocre blogger. I'm sure the media
C-level folks are thrilled how little money has been spent generating
these stories -- for those slow on the uptake, note the repeating
theme from above.

I will say that the intermingling of political opinion and story has
been better than average. Unfortunately, the average is so bad over
the past two decades, it's hard to demonstrate this is a compliment.

Having said all this, I have found a few reporters who seem to have
made a good effort, gathering useful chains of facts and quotes to
help me understand how decisions were made (or likely made, given the
arrangement of information), and a enough basis of understanding that
I can add to that understanding as new events unfolds, and make better
decisions in my future.

Unfortunately, one of those decisions is to continue my high
skepticism about your fellow workers. It shouldn't be so hard for
your readers to figure out what's going on. When I can't trust you
to report fairly straight-forward stories like this one, I get even
more distrustful with more complex stories, especially while those
are unfolding -- you know, news.