The US airline’s overbooking PR gaffe was an extreme one. But other firms such as Tesco are all-too prone to buzzwords that baffle both staff and customers
United Airlines has been compared to Gerald Ratner after its extraordinary reaction to a passenger on one of its planes being dragged away with a bloodied face by security guards.
Ratner, as a reminder, is responsible for probably the most famous PR gaffe of all time. He was chairman of the high street jewellery firm Ratners when during a speech in 1991 he described one of his products as “total crap”, saying that earrings sold by the business were “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long”. After the speech the company nearly collapsed, and he was fired less than two years later.