Late Monday night the United Airlines CEO responded to the massive online outrage from the video of a man being aggressively removed from a flight.
At that point Oscar Munoz, United CEO, defended his employees’ actions by saying that the passenger was being “disruptive and belligerent.”
The response to this video seemed to have a direct correlation to United's standing in the market. On Monday night it closed with only a 0.9% gain. On Tuesday it took a huge hit, losing close to $1 billion off of the company’s market value.
The outrage expressed online and the drop in the market forced Munoz to make another statement Tuesday afternoon. This time taking responsibility and apologizing for the incident. He claimed that he shared the public’s sentiments and was outraged by the video.
The company will supposedly re-evaluate their methods and come back with a strategy for “how we handle oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforcement.” He promises to have results from their internal evaluation by the end of April.
The change of response from the company could also have to do with the angry response from one of United’s most important growth markets: China. The video was a trending topic on Weibo (their version of Twitter) and received over 100 million views.