Business Ethics: A Case Study on United Airlines Incident

This essay discusses about a moral issue related to United Airlines incident and offers recommendation on the basis of a balanced moral position. It makes use of the approach of ethics, deontology along with rights to solve the ethical issue.

Running head: BUSINESS ETHICS
Business Ethics
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

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Business ethics refer to professional ethics that helps in examining the ethical
principles which can rise within a business environment. It can be applied to all the aspects in
relation to business conduct which is important for behaviour of the individuals in an
organization. This essay discusses about a moral issue and talks about the parties that are
involved within the business case. It offers recommendation on the basis of a balanced moral
position. The essay makes use of the approach of ethics, deontology along with rights to
solve the ethical issue.
Moral issue was related to an incident on a United Airlines flight where a man was
dragged off the United Airlines flight (Edition.cnn.com ). It raised a lot of furore over the
platform of social media. There exists a system that allow airlines in booting passengers from
the flights. United Airlines was following policy and this caused the situation to turn
physical. United had asked the passengers to forego the seats in exchange of compensation.
In the event of no-person volunteering airline had to take recourse to the process of
involuntary de-boarding. Four passengers had been selected for the function of involuntary
bumping. Three person complied on board the flight but there was a fourth person David Dao
who refused it as he had work at hospital in next day. Chicago Department of the Aviation
Security Officers were instrumental in dragging the person called Dr David Dao in the aisle
when the other passengers shouted in protest. The man was resisting on his removal and he
ran back into the airplane. His face grew bloodied from the encounter and the other
passengers on board the United Airlines flight called it a traumatic experience (Vaughn, pp
45). He was dragged in an unconscious state and there were other passengers in the flight
who filmed the episode as they felt it to be an outrageous incident. United Airlines further
created a bad impression on people as he called the incident “re-accomodating customers”.
The CEO of United Airlines called the screaming passenger to be “disruptive”.
Overbooking cannot be said to be illegal because it is decreed that the airlines can remove

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passengers to be removed on the basis of certain criteria like time of checking in or the cost
of the ticket. However, Dr David Dao had some urgent work in the next say at the hospital
that caused him to revolt against the decision of officials of United Airlines. The brutal
treatment that was perpetrated on David Dao went against any norms of moral ethics.
Deontology is an ethical approach that lays emphasis on rightness or wrongness of the action
which is opposed to rightness or wrongness in relation to the consequences of the act. It lays
stress on whether the action was good or bad. It refers to rule based ethics as rules can help in
binding an individual to the duties (Christians, pp 132). On the basis of deontological ethics it
can be argued that the act of treating David Dao in an inhumane manner was a violation of
his right to human dignity. It stripped him of the right of human virtue that stipulates the
individuals in the society should be dealt with in the proper manner. Individual rights are
indicative of liberties of the individuals so that they can pursue the goals without any kind of
interference from the other individuals. The rights that are provided to individuals within the
social structure include right of living, liberty and pursuit of the happiness (Sacco, pp 125).
David Dao had boarded the flight as he had purchased the ticket of United Airlines flight. He
had some urgent work in hospital the following day that caused him to revolt when he was
asked to de-board. David Dao had the right to go in that flight that was taken away from him
by the officials of the airport. The forcible removal from the plane violated the rights that are
ascribed to an individual in the society. It goes against the moral norms and he was badly
beaten which was not the proper way of treating a passenger on board a flight (Rosas, pp 10).
The harassment of David Dao on board the flight was shocking to the passengers of the flight
and left a bad impression on their mind.
The United Airlines should change the bumping policies that can act to the benefit of
both the United Airlines along with the passengers of the flight. The airline should be able to
convince the passengers in surrendering the seats nicely. The officials of the flight should

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show proper decorum while removing the passengers from the flight (Jackson and Michael,
pp 280). The airlines should offer a large sum of money that can make the passengers
surrender their seats without any kind of retaliation. The passengers on a plane should not be
removed after they have taken the seat. The request for the volunteers should not come after
the passengers had boarded the plane.

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References
Christians, Clifford G., et al. Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, CourseSmart
eTextbook. Routledge, 2015.
Edition.cnn.com. "Passenger Dragged Off Overbooked United Flight". CNN, 2018,
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/10/travel/passenger-removed-united-flight-trnd/index.html.
Accessed 11 Oct 2018.
Jackson, Frank, and Michael Smith. "The implementation problem for
deontology." Weighing reasons (2016): 279-291.
Rosas, Alejandro, et al. "Hot utilitarianism and cold deontology: Insights from a response
patterns approach to sacrificial and real world dilemmas." Social neuroscience(2018): 1-11.
Sacco, Donald F., et al. "The adaptive utility of deontology: Deontological moral decision-
making fosters perceptions of trust and likeability." Evolutionary Psychological Science 3.2
(2017): 125-132.
Vaughn, Lewis. Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary issues. WW Norton &
Company, 2015.