How United CEO Oscar Munoz, ‘Communicator of the Year’, dragged his reputation through the mud

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In an interview with Good Morning America, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz said he felt ashamed when watching viral videos of a passenger being dragged from his seat aboard a flight. Photo: TNS

Published: 12:18pm, 13 Apr 2017Updated: 9:26pm, 13 Apr 2017

Not quite a month ago, before #LeggingsGate and dragging-gate and the accompanying public scorn, United Airlines chief executive Oscar Munoz put on a bow tie and ascended a stage in New York for the self-styled “Oscars of the PR world”.

Munoz had just been named PRWeek’s “Communicator of the Year” - an honour he shared with gay rights pioneer Edie Windsor and Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban for championing women’s rights.

Munoz had not done anything like that. But he had, PRWeek explained, rehabilitated the image of an airline once tangled in multiple image crises - unpopular with employees and customers alike.

“Communication and communication strategy is not just part of the game, it is the game,” Munoz said as he accepted PRWeek’s award, according to his company’s news release.

United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz had won over the PR industry and his own staff. But that was before the disastrous handling of an incident in which a passenger was dragged off a flight in Chicago. Photo: AP

On Tuesday - just before Munoz issued United’s fourth attempt at a response to an incident in which a passenger was violently dragged off a plane so a crew member could take his seat - PRWeek’s editor in chief wrote a scathing assessment of the honoree’s subsequent performance.