This week we’ve asked five guest bloggers to contribute to the Our Views section of Reputation Online. Today’s post comes from Bryce Keane, account manager at Mulberry Marketing Communications

In the interests of disclosure, I should declare that 14 months ago, when I was living in Australia, GAP Adventures was a client, although it hasn’t been since I relocated to London and it didn’t assist in any way with the writing of this post.

Even so, that’s not the reason this latest tale of deplorable practice by a major brand being exposed publicly via social media crossed my radar. It came to me as a national news story from home and is one of the first times (in Australia, at least) that I’ve seen a story unfolding in real time via Twitter from the US be picked up by a number of bloggers (notably Jaunted and then The Consumerist) and finally end up as nationally syndicated news in Australia thanks to a social media-savvy News Corporation journalist.

For those who haven’t seen it, the story involved everyone’s favourite guitar-breaking US airline, United Airlines, allegedly overbooking a flight from Burlington, Vermont to Washington DC on 13 July. The flight was reported to be overweight so, rather than any cargo or luggage removal, the airline’s staff publicly announced to all passengers that they would remove the 20 passengers who had paid the least for their tickets, naming them in front of the rest of the passengers.

Aboard this flight was Bruce Poon Tip, owner and founder of the world’s largest adventure travel company GAP Adventures and, with 11,355 Twitter followers, an influencer in online travel and business circles. What followed was a series of tweets by Bruce directed at United Airlines, chronicling the entire saga. Those forced to leave the flight were reported to be predominantly families and the elderly. Eventually someone at United responded to the deluge of targeted tweets with: “What airport and what gate? We’ll look into this,” and “This shouldn’t have happened. We are locating the correct station and gate no. and will address the issue today.”

Although it’s nice that whoever manages United’s digital presence finally attempted to address the issue, this is essentially the extent of their response. As of Wednesday, a week after the initial incident (with no follow-up, apology or explanation from United since), Business Week published an article on the incident claiming that six passengers volunteered to leave and only one was bumped, yet all were compensated with “a $600 travel voucher and flew out the following day”.

As United became famous around the world for refusing to claim responsibility for breaking a little-known band’s guitars, which was promptly answered by the band putting the whole experience in song and uploading it to YouTube where it went viral, I find myself less inclined to believe this side of the story. Combine what appears to be a too little, too late response to the incident with increasing brand damage as more media outlets continue to contact Bruce via Twitter – along with the exposure of an apparent internal view that passengers who book in advance or seek out deals are considered less valuable to the carrier – and the odds don’t look good for United.

I also can’t shake the lingering feeling that travel companies must surely be a constant source of business for airlines like United. This alone should be enough to instigate a much quicker response from the airline to limit damage to its brand. In later tweets, in response to public and media attention, Bruce went to great length to declare that he wasn’t attacking the airline, merely the way the incident was handled. Yet there’s still no response from the airline aside from the tweets listed above.

This isn’t the first time an airline has found itself under fire after passengers have used social media to uncover questionable practices, and I doubt it’ll be the last. So I wonder if this may go down as yet another case where a big organisation could stand to learn a valuable lesson or two from a smaller one? Or perhaps United simply needs to realise that, thanks to social media, every passenger now has a powerful voice and, most importantly, take a step back and remember that its customers are people, not walking dollar signs.

Tags: Bruce Poon Tip, bryce keane, GAP adventures, guest bloggers, mulberry, united airlines