From a public relations perspective, United CEO had to get out there on TV so the public could view his remorse. Written statements wouldn’t suffice. He’s now saying a lot of the right things.
Amid one of the worst public relations disasters in United Airlines’ history, CEO said the incident in Chicago represented a system failure and pledged the airline won’t use law enforcement to remove booked, paid and seated passengers from aircraft in the future.
Scott Kirby sat down with ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis Wednesday in Chicago and part of the interview appeared on Good Morning America. This was Scott Kirby first interview since the incident on Sunday (watch the interview below).Had United employees been more empowered to use their common sense, the incident could have been prevented, Scott said. “We have not provided our frontline supervisors and managers and individuals with the proper tools, policies and procedures that allow them to use their common sense,” he said. “They all have an incredible amount of common sense and this issue could have been solved by that. That’s on me, I have to fix that and I think that’s something we can do.”
Scott issued another apology about the incident after initially downplaying it earlier in the week. “My initial words fell short of expressing something that we were truly feeling and that’s something that I’ve learned from. I do look forward to a time as much as I am able to apologize directly to him [Dr. David Dao] for what’s happened.”
Asked what the doctor deserves in the aftermath of the incident, Scott said, “Certainly an apology and from that point on we’ll have to see.”The incident, which involved passenger Dao being dragged off a plane by law enforcement when he refused to give up his seat for United employees who needed to get in place to staff another flight, has prompted a “deep and thorough review of a lot of our policies that support this,” United Airlines CEO said.
“Specifically, the use of law enforcement aboard an aircraft has to be looked at very carefully,” he said. “They’re clearly there for a purpose of safety and we want to make sure they protect us. But for other reasons, I think that’s a policy we must absolutely look at.”