From apologies to managing impression : the case of "the United Express Flight 3411 incident"

Abstract

On 9th April, 2017 a man was removed from an overbooked flight of United Airlines (UA). The following morning, the incident was published on newspapers extensively across the world showing bloody pictures of the man. This incident, known as the Flight 3411 incident, is examined in this case study. Using the Appraisal Framework (Martin & White, 2005), the CCSARP (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1984) and Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical model, this study aims at studying the apologies made by UA over the course of the Flight 3411 incident from the SFL perspective and the Speech Act perspective, as well as understanding how UA managed impression. Data involved in this study include the apologies statements given by UA and the review and action report they later released. 10 news articles on the incident published in the US were also collected. Findings show that externally, a negative attitude in general was projected towards the incident. Internally, the CCSARP framework demonstrated that UA was using a number of apology strategies to redress their reputation. The Appraisal Framework also revealed how UA, through making positive and negative claims, was in fact managing impression. Overall analytical results showed that UA was using “remedial work” (Goffman, 1971) to achieve impression management. The act of managing impression was initially impertinent following UA’s first apology statement, but upon later efforts in offering to repair and by admitting shortcomings, UA’s later apologies were construed to be felicitous and were effective in managing impression.