United Airlines Flight 3411 Events and the Causes of Service Failure
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Questions
What happened on UA flight 3411 and what were the causes of service failures?
What service expectations do customers have of Airlines such as UA? How did these expectations develop over time?
What steps can UA take to rebuild its tarnished brand image?
United Airlines Case Study
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United Airlines Case Study
United Airlines has implemented diverse strategies to demonstrate its efforts to meet distinguished customer services in the air travel niche. The case study reveals that the company has received rewards for advancing environmentally-friendly initiatives that minimize its carbon footprint. It has also stretched itself to satisfy customer expectations in different departments. However, Puri et al. (2018) indicate that UA’s history is replete with diverse controversies that dent its reputation regarding treating its customers. Past events reveal that the company’s employees have mishandled their clients, destroying their properties, discriminating, shaming them, or causing physical injuries. These incidents were a precursor of the current crisis in which the company finds itself, illustrating a trend of deplorable relations with its most important stakeholders, the customers. As a result, this case study explores what happened on flight 3411 and the causes of these events, assess the customers’ service expectations while traveling with any airline like the UA, and recommends strategies the company can embrace to reclaim its lost brand image.
UA Flight 3411 Events and the Causes of Service Failure
UA created a customer service crisis on flight 3411 in 2017 by aggressively deplaning one of its customers. This incident emerged from the last-hour need for the company’s four employees to travel to “a connecting destination,” requiring some of the customers from the fully occupied plane to give way to these workers (Puri et al., 2018). At first, the crew members requested a voluntary deplaning accompanied by a $400 travel voucher with the company and accommodation in a hotel if traveling with any plane after 21 hours. Since none of the clients welcomed this offer, they doubled the compensation to $800, but it was still non-appealing. Despite this effort by the company to solve its issue by offering a higher reward, the approach was not enticing for any passengers, meaning their need to travel at the time was more important. Then, the crew escalated the issue to using a computer algorithm to identify clients that would involuntarily bump onto a later flight to create space. This approach was not fair because it privileged frequent UA customers and individuals paying more for their flights. As a result, it was a discriminative approach that left David Dao, a 69-year-old doctor, as one of the victims on the compulsory removal list. When he insisted on the urgent need for him to fly and attend to his patients, the crew sought assistance from the security officers at the airport, leading to Dao’s violent removal and bodily injuries. Other passengers recorded and shared this incident online, leading to a public outcry.
The service failure emerges from UA’s established trends of poor customer treatment. For instance, Puri et al. (2018) indicate that UA has normalized or overlooked frequent abuse of clients, including the destruction of a singer’s guitar in 2008, the shaming of a breastfeeding woman in 2015, and many other negligence incidents. In this context, the incident that transpired in April 2017 reflects the company crew’s ongoing lack of restraint to violate the rights of its customers and their inability to remain organized or find alternatives for solving self-made problems. For instance, the day’s events demonstrate that overbooking and using an inflexible customer selection algorithm was the primary cause of the crisis. Each individual booked a ticket based on their travel plans, and UA’s logistical incompetence overstretched their resources (Puri et al., 2018). As a result, identifying and disembarking four passengers was an inconvenience that UA needed to think critically about before executing. The incident illustrates that the company has minimal respect culture for its clients because the management could have assessed other enticing approaches to find volunteers rather than resulting in victimization and abuse. For instance, if it was so urgent for UA employees to travel at the time, the company could have further increased the compensation and supplemented them with reasonable incentives to find volunteers. As a result, the ensuing apologies by the CEO, Oscar Munoz, were inconsequential since the damage had already occurred, inconveniencing and harming customers.
Customers’ Service Expectations for Airlines
United Airlines is a firm that has been in operation for decades and understands the service expectations of its customers. Puri ...