Puppy’s death turns heat again on United chief

Animal’s demise in an overhead bin follows last year’s dragging of flier and other gaffes.

United Airlines has managed a feat to which no company aspires: outraging the world twice in less than a year. The death of a puppy in an overhead bin raises anew the question of whether the carrier’s chief executive can hang on to his job.

United has sustained a series of embarrassments on Chief Executive Oscar Munoz’s watch, including the death of a French bulldog on Monday and the death of a giant rabbit at the Chicago airport last spring. And, of course, Munoz survived one of the worst corporate scandals in recent history almost a year ago, when amateur video captured aviation security officers forcibly dragging a passenger down an airplane aisle.

Airline insiders say this latest blunder is unlikely to cost Munoz his job, given his successes with stabilizing United’s workforce and improving on-time performance. Yet Munoz already has seen his promised promotion to chairman of United Continental Holdings Inc. canceled over his handling of the dragging incident. And escalating social media attention extends the life of each gaffe in the public’s mind.

“The problem is United has long had a culture that some might describe as not customer-oriented and others might describe as anticustomer,” said Bruce Hicks, a former head of communications for Continental Airlines.

Board members should be thinking about how to change United’s culture and who should be the leader to do it, said Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines, a company with its own history of poor customer service. Though he doesn’t see Munoz or President Scott Kirby losing their jobs, he said, “any one of these instances are terrible on their own, but you link them all together and you realize you’ve got a problem.”

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy declined to comment on speculation about Munoz’s future.

Chicago-based United finds itself in a bad-news cycle that is difficult to break out of, said Hicks, who fended off negative press in the 1980s over Continental’s difficult merger with the defunct People Express Airlines. After the video surfaced of officers bloodying passenger David Dao last April, Munoz compounded the damage by criticizing Dao’s behavior.

He then quickly reversed course, pledging sweeping changes to United’s customer service practices. Recently, the airline rolled out a training program for thousands of employees called Core4 that will encourage them to offer more compassionate service.

The puppy’s death on a flight from Houston to New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Monday reinforced United’s reputation for corporate insensitivity. Widespread posts on social media say a flight attendant had the animal’s crate placed in the overhead bin over the owner’s protests. Although United apologized and took responsibility for the death, the carrier erred in saying that the flight attendant didn’t know there was a dog in the crate, Hicks said.

United got more bad press last week when it replaced an employee bonus program based on performance with a lottery that awarded larger prizes to fewer people. It dropped the idea after employees pushed back.

Munoz has guided United through an effort to improve the profitability of its hubs by increasing the number of connecting flights. But some investors fear the effort is boosting its seating capacity too much, with the extra supply dragging down fares and hurting profits in the short run.

United shares dropped 2.6% on Wednesday to $70.74, the biggest decline in a month, leaving the stock up 23% since Munoz became CEO in September 2015. That put it behind the 28% gain for a Standard & Poor’s index of the five biggest U.S. airlines and the 40% advance for the S&P 500 index.

Ultimately, Munoz probably will survive this latest scandal, given the goodwill he’s built within the company, observers say. He has improved morale among United’s almost 90,000 workers and boosted its position in monthly on-time performance rankings of U.S. airlines to middle of the pack or better from near the bottom.