My Wish Came True

Just two months after writing it, my wish sort of came true. United Airlines broke Dave Carroll’s guitar. He, understandably, was very upset. After almost a year of trying to navigate the “normal” channels, he wrote a song. He posted it to YouTube. What happened? Well…

In 20 short days:

  • – The YouTube video has 4,136,582 views
  • – The news made CNBC, USA Today, LA Times and The Huffington Post among others
  • – Carroll did interviews with CNN, Fox News, The Today Show and Jimmy Kimmel
  • – Dave got a record deal out of it and is being called a hero in some music circles
  • – On July 23 his song, “United Breaks Guitars” was the #1 country download on the UK iTunes site
  • – A UK writer for Times Online did the math and is convinced this incident cost United Shareholders $180 million. Ouch.

Ironically, United did respond within the first week of the video being posted. But, that piece has slightly been ignored. Maybe it’s because they haven’t made a strong public statement. Their response is one sentence – they wanted to talk to Carroll privately and asked to use his video for training. Maybe it’s because it theoretically took them over a year to respond.

Unfortunately for United, this plane has already left and continues to plow full steam ahead. But, will it continue to damage United’s reputation and more importantly, their bottom line?

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