If you’ve ever flown on the three large US domestic airlines, you’ll know that there is little to distinguish them from a bus coach. The service is poor, the flights are full, the staff are rude, and you basically have to pay for anything other than the oxygen on board.
I’m talking here about American Airlines, Delta and United. These three are the main culprits — there are others — who pile discomfort onto the vicious officialdom that you receive after passing through security and identity checks at US airports.
These three airlines also have the temerity to lobby the US Federal Government over what they deem to be unfair competition from the three main Gulf-based carriers, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways. Simply put, the US airlines fly older planes at a higher price on schedules that don’t suit, have poor or no on-board service nor entertainment systems, and treat their paying customers as if they are nothing but an inconvenience.
Or worse still, passengers on an over-booked plane have to endure the trauma of watching United airline staff and Chicago transport police manhandle and assault a 69-year-old physician.
Last Sunday, Flight 3411 from Chicago was overbooked. The airline — and the big three carriers in the US do it — had filled all its seats with paying passengers, and then some.
United had four airline crew it wanted to “dead head” — that’s the jargon used in airlines to fly a non-flying crew to another point to start their flying shift. If there’s anyone guilty of being a dead head here, it’s the gate staff who randomly picked four passengers’ names and ordered them off the plane.
Doctor David Dao was selected, and he politely explained that he had patients to attend to. That’s when United lost its patience, brought in security and wrestled the poor unfortunate passenger from his seat, banging his face off an armrest, giving him a bloodied lip, and creating a storm of protests.
Things have not gone well for United this past month. Another of its deadheads stopped a 10-year-old from boarding a flight because she was wearing leggings. The airline said it was within its rights to do so because the girl and her family were on staff tickets and a dress code applies in such instances. The furore over “leggingate” had just subsided when Sunday’s incident occurred.
And it has been a nightmare week for Oscar Munoz, the CEO of United’s parent company, United Contintental Holdings (UHC).
The entity that Munoz heads up is the result of the merger between United and Continental, one that thankfully removed Continental Airlines from the map — otherwise this you’re reading now would be about the four worst US airlines rather than three.
After the video first emerged, Munoz said the airline was reaching out to the man to “resolve this situation”.
Within hours on Monday, his tone turned defensive. He described the man as “disruptive and belligerent”.
By Tuesday afternoon, almost two days after the Sunday evening events, Munoz issued another apology: “No one should ever be mistreated this way.” By that stage, $600 million (Dh2.2 billion) had been wiped from UHC’s share value.
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America aired Wednesday, Munoz said he felt “ashamed” watching video of the man being forced off the jet. He has promised to review the airline’s passenger-removal policy. He also apologised again to Dao, his family and the other passengers who witnessed him being taken off the flight.
“That is not who our family at United is,” he said. “This will never happen again on a United flight. That’s my promise.”
Munoz is new to the airline industry, having made his reputation first at Coca-Cola, then telecom giant AT&T, and lastly at CSX, a large freight train company based in Florida. He was the Chief Operating Officer and was responsible, literally, for making the trains run on time. He was appointed UHC’s CEO in January, 2015. If United’s reputation now is bad, back then it was worse, still reeling after five years from the convulsions of having to swallow and merge Continental in 2010.
He left his wife Cathy and their four children behind while he took a small apartment in Chicago. He was fit, a marathon runner, and fastidious about his diet.
But 37 days into his new role running United, he felt chest pains and managed to call paramedics to his home. By the time Munoz was in hospital he was unconscious. When he awoke, the news was bad. He needed a new heart and, while he awaited a transplant donor, he needed a machine to keep him alive.
Those events would make a lesser person re-evaluate everything. Not Munoz. He wasn’t a quitter. He was the first of his eight other brothers and sisters to go to college in Los Angeles and he didn’t get to be one of the most influential Hispanic CEO’s in America by quitting. He went so far as to interview new recruits for United senior roles at his apartment while hooked to the machine.
After a wait of 56 days, a donor was found.
Munoz boasts about being released from hospital after just a week from the transplant procedure. It’s hard to know if the operation was a success: He and his airline just come across as heartless.
