Munoz had his shot first, on April 10, after four passengers were ejected from an overbooked United flight and a video of
one of them being dragged down the plane aisle went viral. Famously — at this point immortally — Munoz apologized for "having to re-accommodate these passengers."
Astonishingly, Munoz's second attempt to sort things out was even worse. That time, it came in an internal memo to United Airlines employees in which he described the victim of the dragging incident as "disruptive and belligerent," after having been "politely asked" to leave the flight. A note on optics that Munoz might find helpful: It is a presumption—albeit a rebuttable one—that in any video, the bleeding person being set upon by three larger, non-bleeding people is not typically the one described as "belligerent." You're welcome, sir.
Then, at last, as the airline's stock dove like a plane in wind shear and United credit cards were cut up
en masse, came
the final attempt at an I'm-sorry that would stick. It started badly, with a soupçon of "mistakes were made," when Munoz referred to "The truly horrific event
that occurred on this flight" (passive-tense emphasis added). Then it gained a little bit of purchase with the go-to incantations "I deeply apologize," "we take full responsibility" and "I promise you we will do better."
This last, canned, but at least not awful effort may have done precisely nothing to make anyone on the planet ever want to book a United flight again, but it at least got Munoz offstage and allowed the airline's image-makers to try to clean up the public-relations Chernobyl he left behind.