The United Debacle: Winners, Not Volunteers

Seems Like An Easy Choice

By now, if you haven't heard of the PR nightmare that hit United this last week, you are probably making a concerted effort to avoid broadcast news and social media. From the initial burst of the story, to the next stage of disastrous CEO non-apology, to the truly detestable blaming the victim background work done to the passenger by his hometown media, we've all become experts in public relations, social media and airline ticketing policies. Along with having a new corporate villain to boycott, we've been soaking in this for quite some time, and the fact that it made international coverage means it's probably got a second life overseas, too.

But I want to take it back to the actual moment of the negotiation between the crew and the passengers, and show how the failure started a long time before four crew members for another plane had to displace passengers from a full cabin. Remember, the crew originally offers one price for those willing to give up their seat, then a second price, before going to the forced removal.

Which leads to the following groups of unhappy people, and it doesn't take a genius to see how, well, everyone in the cabin winds up fairly unhappy at the close of the exercise. And that's even if it goes well.

1) Those who take offer 1, and feel bad about not holding out for offer 2. These folks will, in all likelihood, never take offer 1 again.

2) Those who take offer 2, and feel good about not taking offer 1, but also wonder if there would be offer 3. They are also never taking offer 1 again.

3) Those who took neither offer, and now have heard that the allotment has gone up. Again, no one here is taking offer 1. And many of them are going to have to have a significant cost savings or other enticement to risk flying United again. (Keep in mind that from the airline's point of view, what you really want is a near-immediate acceptance of offer 1, so you can stay as close to on time as possible.)

So instead of all that, let's imagine how this looks and feels if, at that moment of negotiation, there had been some planning, not towards creating a real-time unwelcome reverse auction, but towards the fast and easy resolution of the problem. Beyond an inhuman level of personal economics that doesn't take into account, well, how humans treat risk and reward.

Imagine the flight attendants pulling out a sweepstakes style wheel, and then playing a game of Big Seat Winner. They spin a wheel with every seat location; if your seat comes up, you get a replacement ticket and ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. In cash, in hundreds, paid out with happy counting. The next winner gets 2 grand, 4 grand, and so on. Honestly, once you start peeling off hundred dollar bills, the amounts are manageable. Instead of some nebulous check amount later.

And yes, I know, there's some tiresome income tax and security and sweepstake issues that you have to deal with, but you have everyone's address from the flight manifest, and you are a massive corporation. You can work out a lockbox in the cockpit with hundreds and a legal team sending a tax statement later.

Now, we've taken the entire chance of feeling bad about making the wrong auction choice out of the equation. We also go to a game show style interaction that has been proven to work for the better part of a century, and create winners, where we previously had volunteers to a corporation's profit margin. We also create a viral video moment of (maybe) someone celebrating their big payday, and the fun image of the fan of hundred dollar bills. At the very least, if someone is still bent out of shape about having to leave the plane, we make it more about their ingratitude, and less about the thuggery of the security force.

You could also give this real production values, the way that some airlines do with their pre-flight instructions. You could make it a part of every flight and turn your airline into the one where, every time out, whether there are displacements or not, someone's walking out with cash. And how much would United like to be known, today, as the Win Cash Airline, as opposed to You May Get Hurt Air?

The problem, as I see it, isn't that a single passenger got beaten, as hateful as that is. The bigger issue is that an entire industry has become so oblivious to anything but a spreadsheet that no one seems to be thinking about things from the perspective of the customer. Which led to dehumanization, and, well, beatings.

You really shouldn't have to have terrible things happen to adjust your mindset. But now that the crisis has happened, it's even worse if it goes to waste.

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