"It's not my fault. He started it!"
Just about any parent-or anyone young enough to remember their own childhood-has heard that tried-and-untrue excuse. It essentially boils down to: "Don't pay attention to that thing I just got (deservedly) caught for when you should be punishing so-and-so for their screw up instead!"
As most of us (hopefully) learn: Both offending parties wind up getting consequences in the end.
How many airlines are now feeling a backlash from United's spate of debacles that have filled the headlines for nearly two months?
Yet, how many of them were quick to pile on after the Chicago-based carrier's leggings incident? After Dr. David Dao was dragged from a plane, then given an (initially) tone-deaf and arrogant non-apology?
Where the first story was a harbinger, the second became an industry-wide watershed, and not just because it greased the wheels for Congressional inquiry into the questionable practice of overbooking. Ever since the Dao Incident, the media and public's spotlight has been on airlines.
It's been withering.
For every follow-up story against United-like Simon the Rabbit being frozen and then allegedly cremated to cover it up-there has been Delta called to the carpet for striking down a bystander's cellphone or booting a family due to a toddler being the latest overbooking victim. Or Air Nippon's gluten-free meal done wrong. Or American losing the remains of a passenger's deceased daughter.
I could go on and on, yet many of these stories wouldn't have made it anywhere near the front lines of countless sites, channels, blogs, papers, etc. without United's supreme gaffe going first.
That's not to downplay the incidents or various victims in any of the above. I'm glad their stories are being heard, that public consciousness is on their side (for a time) and that the airline industry is hopefully more "sensitive" to rectifying plights than it would have been a couple months ago.
In fact, many of these incidents happened before United's but are just now coming to light as the insatiable media cycle (and more than a few lawyers) search under every nook and cranny for untold tales of traveler woe. Everyone is waiting for the next flight attendant to look at them wrong so they can catch it on their smartphone.
They're all striking while the iron is hot before public outcry shifts its gaze to something else.
And, it will.
When I used to teach high school, I'd often begin the school year with a plea to my students: "I don't like enforcing rules or creating them any more than you like having to follow them. Let's all figure out ways not to do dumb stuff so that we don't create the need for more rules."
Sometimes that strategy worked very well. It sucks when it doesn't.
The seemingly endless stream of official airline apologies and press releases have sounded promising. (They almost always do.) Some of the proposed changes even look okay.
That good likely wouldn't have occurred without all this bad preceding it, though it didn't have to be this way.
The real test comes at the personal level within large companies that likely became that big by once-upon-a-time giving a larger share of a damn about their customers' experiences.
The buck may stop with the CEO, but it starts at the ground level and permeates all tiers of management.
A systemic failure of the kind we've recently seen shows that empowerment, compassion and practicality were long overshadowed by apathy masked with formality. It's been all press release sentimentality that fades before the ink even dries.
It's an industry-wide attitude problem that needs to shift-one that's likely been as much of a bummer for all the already responsible, kind, wonderful folks who work for United and the other airlines as it has been for any passenger.
The hurricane of bad news is going to pass in time as people get bored with it.
Hopefully, the lessons don't.
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