United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz on Wednesday ate his words (and tweets) in the wake of the controversial treatment of a passenger in what has been called a PR disaster, appearing in his first on-camera interview since the incident.
The incident, which saw an Asian passenger being forcefully dragged off a United plane on Sunday sparked outrage, and put the company in hot water.
When the news came out, Munoz chose to stand by his employees first and backed off from mentioning any apology to the man, who was later identified as David Dao, a Vietnamese-born American doctor. Instead, his initial statement blamed the passenger for being "disruptive and belligerent."
The footage of a man being violently dragged off a United flight Sunday sparked international outrage. /CFP Photo
Munoz was widely criticized for his response. After the company's stock lost as much as four percent on Tuesday, and protests online and offline continued to gain global traction and attention, Munoz followed up with a statement seen as a more in-depth apology.
"No one should ever be mistreated this way," Munoz said in the statement.
As more people added their voices to the growing anger surrounding the incident, there were even calls for Munoz to resign. The CEO said he has no plans to resign, and called this issue a "system failure," indicating that international airlines do not have a complete system that can provide front-line managers with more tools to deal with such situations.
"We have not provided our front-line supervisors and managers and individuals with the proper tools, policies, procedures that allow them to use their common sense," said Munoz, in an interview with American broadcaster ABC.
When asked whether Dao was at fault in any way, he totally changed his attitude, replying, "No, he can’t be. He was a paying passenger sitting on our seat, in our aircraft, and no one should be treated that way."
Further, Munoz promised that United will not use law enforcement to remove onboard passengers in the future, and such an incident will never happen again.
"You saw us at a bad moment and this can never, will never happen again on a United Airlines flight. That's my premise and that's my promise," said Munoz.
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