There are many crisis’ in public relations history but one
very interesting public relations disaster I’m aware of is the guitar fiasco that
resulted in a substantial amount of negative publicity toward United Airlines.
The disaster occurred in 2008 where, Dave Carroll and his band were flying with
United Airlines. The band were looking outside when they saw the baggage
handlers throwing guitar cases; subsequently, breaking Dave’s Taylor made
Guitar. He made multiple attempts to have United pay for the damage of the
guitar they caused; however, nothing came of it. He then wrote a song titled
‘United breaks guitars’ and got millions of views on YouTube. The song was
widely broadcasted all over the internet and also on the news. United Airlines
was looking at a public relations disaster, the bad reputation was travelling
around the world very fast. To fix the reputation this song was having on
United Airlines they offered Dave Carroll the money to repair to guitar;
however, the time to act had passed (Lawson 2014). It was months after the
scandal had happened, too late in regards to what is acceptable in a public
relation crisis (Wilcox et al. 2013). Dave refused the money but he did suggest
United gives the money to charity. In relation to time after a crisis, United
Airlines suffered, the song had already been out for many months before action
was taken to reconcile the situation. In saying this, United Airlines did
apologise and offer for the guitar to be repaired. In my opinion, although the
airline did take too long to repair the damaged reputation, it did apologise
and was able to reconcile the difference they and Dave had, repairing the
reputation the song had caused.
Lawson, C 2014, Module 9 Public relations issues:
conflict, COMM11110 Introduction to Public Relations study guide,
CQUniversity, viewed 6 May 2014, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?name=COMM11110_2141
Wilcox, D, Cameron, G, Reber, B & Shin, J 2013, Think
Public Relations, Pearson, New Jersey.
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