5 Revisit the example, ‘United drags passengers off its plane’.

(a) How should the airline have handled the situation?

(b) After the incident attracted so much negative publicity, United announced a new upper limit of $10,000 in compensation for passengers who agree to give up a seat on a flight where United needs to free space and that it would create a ‘customer solutions team to provide agents with creative solutions’ for getting inconvenienced customers to their destination. Do you think that these were sensible moves? (c)

Within a few days another ‘scandal’ hit the airline. A ‘potentially prize-winning’ rabbit (called Simon) reportedly died while in transit from London Heathrow to O’Hare airport in Chicago. Why is this incident so important to United?