United Airlines is Done For

Twitter has become a prominent platform to reach out to businesses for easily accessible customer service. As Twitter is a social site for people to express their opinions, it is important for businesses to monitor consumers' perceptions about their brand.

Back in 2009, a musician named Dave Carroll flew on United Airlines, and the luggage handlers broke his guitar. When he attempted to reach out to United Airlines, they were apathetic and didn't do anything to assist him. He then wrote a song describing his grievances called "United Breaks Guitars," and it went viral overnight. Everyone knew that United breaks guitars.

This viral video taught businesses the importance of handling customer service issues promptly and professionally, they didn't want to go viral in a negative light! Now, 8 years later, United Airlines has an even bigger issue to recover from.

On April 9th, United Airlines staff forcefully removed a passenger from an airline in Chicago after the flight needed 4 additional seats to accommodate staff members. When nobody volunteered, they had to randomly choose 4 people to leave the plane. When one customer refused, he was forcefully removed, and was hit in the face during the removal. The removal was caught on video, and it immediately went viral, even getting President Trump to comment that this service was "horrible."

The outraged public immediately went to Twitter, making all sorts of memes to make fun of United and even satirically tweeting at them to incite responses.

United has gone from being a mediocre airline, to the laughing stock of social media. Their stock has plummeted, and their damage control team's work has been less than promising. What does the future hold for United?