Hopefully putting an end to the media circus that has gripped America's attention over the past 24 hours, the CEO of United Continental, Oscar Munoz, has finally apologized for the airline’s handling of a Chinese-American passenger who was forcibly dragged out of a flight in Chicago, an incident which caused media outrage and cost the airline over a billion dollars in market cap as traders dumped its shares on fears of a Chinese backlash.
As a reminder, earlier this morning, in a letter to employees, Munoz said he was "upset to see and hear about what happened," but defended his staff's actions because the passenger had been "disruptive and belligerent."
It took just a few hours of persistent selling of United stock to change his mind.
United CEO Oscar Munoz: I’m sorry. We will fix this. https://t.co/v8EPGsiDCi pic.twitter.com/eOPiYcagvo
— United (@united) April 11, 2017
“I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard,” Munoz said in a tweeted statement on Tuesday afternoon. “No one should ever be mistreated this way.”
“I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right,” Munoz said, promising a review or airline’s policies on crew movement, volunteer incentives, oversold flights and interactions with law enforcement, to be concluded by the end of April.
“It's never too late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employees that we are going to fix what's broken so this never happens again,” Munoz said.
For many Americans (and Chinese), however, it may be too little too late.