United Airlines:
United boss tries to highlight hubs and history in S.F. travel speech
In S.F. visit, CEO bids to keep company’s hold on business here.
Following a disastrous couple of months for United Airlines’ image, CEO Oscar Munoz came to San Francisco and tried to highlight the airline’s historic connections with the city and its plans to add routes.
In his speech to tourism officials and executives at the San Francisco Travel Association’s annual luncheon, Munoz’s tried to keep United’s hold on Bay Area fliers in one of its most important markets.
At San Francisco International Airport, a key hub for flights along the West Coast and to Asia, United has 300 daily departures to 100 destinations.
In April, passenger David Dao, was dragged off a flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., by aviation police after United crew members told him to relinquish his seat for other airline workers. A police report said Dao lost his balance and fell on an armrest while arguing with officers. Video of Dao being carried off the plane, his face bloodied, created worldwide uproar, particularly among Asians and Asian Americans. United reached a private settlement with Dao later that month, but the damage to its reputation was done.
“San Francisco was one of the first places I came to visit (after the Dao incident) to talk with the local businesses and community,” said Munoz. “I know that the community felt that event more acutely more than anyone else. But we got through it together.”
Munoz said San Francisco is “part of our family.”
If San Francisco is family, there’s another suitor at the door: the merged Alaska Airlines and Virgin America. The combined airline is proving a formidable competitor, with plans for many new flights out of San Francisco.
United announced in May that it would increase flights to 18 destinations over the summer, including Albuquerque, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Nashville, Philadelphia and Portland. In February, it said it would also add flights to Munich, Cincinnati, Detroit, Spokane,
Santa Rosa and Hartford.
Joe Brancatelli, a business travel consultant and former executive editor of Frequent Flyer magazine, believes interest in United among San Francisco passengers is waning after what he said was a decade of low satisfaction ratings.
“Dao was just the symptom of the problem,” he said. “San Francisco has long been the California hub for United. The fact that Alaska and Virgin have been able to chip away at its market is an indication” of passengers’ low regard for United.
At the luncheon Thursday, the travel association named United public affairs executive Melinda Yee Franklin its chairwoman for 2017-18, replacing Rodrigo Enriquez, founder of tour operator Extranomical Adventures.
Franklin promised closer ties between the airline and the local tourism industry, with a focus on making sure that passengers flying in to SFO on United feel safe, secure and welcome.
While United faced heat on late-night shows and on Capitol Hill over the April incident, it has fared better with shareholders, who reelected Munoz to the company’s board of directors last week as shares hit an all-time high in early May. In one concession, United will not promote Munoz to chairman next year as planned, with the board appointing an independent chairman instead.