Korean Air’s nutty onboard incident has been all the rage lately, and I’ve covered it in great detail (thanks in no small part due to my love of first class and nuts!). 😉
To start, here are my previous posts in the saga:
- Korean Air Flight Delayed Over Nuts
- Korean Air Executive Resigns Over Nuts
- Why Is Korean Air’s #NutGate Causing So Much Controversy?
- Korean Air Purser Speaks Out About Nut Outrage
- Korean Air Could Be Fined $2 Million Over Nut Lady
- Sales Of Macadamia Nuts In Korea Have Increased How Much?!
- Arrest Warrant Being Sought For Nutty Korean Air Executive
- Korean Air Executive Detained Over “Nut Rage” Incident
- Nutty Korean Air Executive Indicted, Could Face Up To 15 Years In Jail
For the most part the story seems to have a happy ending, at least for the “common man.” Heather Cho has been punished and humiliated, and that’s a win for the class struggle in Korea.
But it seems it’s not just Heather Cho who has been impacted by the incident, but also Korean Air as a whole, who have seen demand drop by 6%. Via The Chosunilbo:
Korea Air saw an on-year decline of more than six percent of passengers in December last year, probably caused by bad publicity over the “nut rage” incident.
According to the Korea Airports Corporation on Sunday, 1.95 million passengers flew on domestic carriers last month, up 11.5 percent from the same period of 2013. But the number of Korean Air passengers dropped from 516,000 to 482,000 over the same period.
Bad news for Korean Air meant good news for Asiana Airlines, where passenger numbers rose around 13 percent from 358,000 in December 2013 to 406,000 last month, while low-cost carriers’ business also increased.
Now of course it’s difficult to directly correlate a change in demand to the incident. And this does seem especially suspect, since the incident only happened one week into December, so it seems like the number of new bookings during that period would be a more accurate indicator of a change in demand than the number of people actually flying that month, given that most people book their travel more than a few weeks in advance.
Then again, the fact that the overall demand is up substantially and that Asiana and the other carriers are getting a larger share of traffic does suggest there’s at least some correlation.
Interesting stuff…
I do not feel safe on an aircraft where the daughter of a President has more authority than the pilots and the crew. People like this do not belong in aeronautics or heavy industry, where people get killed because of their tantrums.
I can appreciate her action. It is annoying when employees continually fail to obey policies. Sometimes a strict enforcement to make an example of someone is necessary.
She is a powerful lady in Korea.
Why is there so much support for this women? What she did was wrong. Ordering the pilot to change the flight schedule was out of line. Being mad, yelling, and even forcing the attendents to kneel before her was understandable, but changing the plane's flight schedule,,, that was unnecessary. Other punishments would have been smarter. No pay, loss of hours, maybe even a requiring a foot massage from the offending attendent back to Korea would...
Why is there so much support for this women? What she did was wrong. Ordering the pilot to change the flight schedule was out of line. Being mad, yelling, and even forcing the attendents to kneel before her was understandable, but changing the plane's flight schedule,,, that was unnecessary. Other punishments would have been smarter. No pay, loss of hours, maybe even a requiring a foot massage from the offending attendent back to Korea would have been a better choice.
it is common for Korean bosses to expect their employees to grovel at their feet when mistakes are made. It usually common for employees to act in an submissive nature toward their bosses. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred here.
once this passes over, she will be back working making more employees bow down at her feet
I am majoring in management in college and admire her ability to command respect from her employees. Too many places have employees that are careless and don't follow rules and policies. I applaude her actions and feel she did not over step. Good managers like her run very successful businesses.
Won't stop me from flying Korean Air.
15 years is way too harsh a sentence. I mean really? 15 years for booting someone off a plane who failed to do their job correctly? Why did she have to resign? I don't see why an arrest was made?
If I was the server and made the mistake, I would have willingly kneeled down to apologize. It is a sincere way to apologize. However, kicking him off the plane was a mistake. She should have let him stay on the plane to specifically serve her with extra care.
@TVK & @Ben - What are you guys smoking, and where can I get some?
NO, actually, KE lose business prior to nut rage. it was actually KE lose to OZ in major Korean Company's annual cotract bid. Major Korean enterprises now use more OZ than KE, for example, Samsung and LG now all request employee must travel on OZ instead of KE.
she wants the servers to serve people correctly.
I agree, nothing wrong with what she did.
Heather Cho is awesome! I work for her and love her demanding ways. It makes the airline a great success!
I guess the attacked purser ended up showing Ms. Cho where to ultimately put the now infamous nuts in.
interesting that Asiana traffic has picked up as their safety culture was similarly mediocre.
personally I won't fly either carrier when there are so many other safer choices. more award space for you!
Has nobody picked up on your obvious double entendre, Lucky? Sigh, sometimes I guess its just too easy :P
this story just keeps on giving. I love it.
Do any other airlines offer macadamia nuts in first?
@ Mangoceviche -- Lufthansa does sometimes.
Have you heard any updates about the ability to transfer UR to KE?
@ John -- Unfortunately not.
While she handled the situation badly, it does make me more inclined to fly them. Would that the little things mattered on certain other airlines.
@Ben - I know KE had a slew of accidents and crashes in the '90s, but I had thought they had learned from it and had made changes. After all Flt 8509 was like 15 years ago and for the last 10 years the safety record has been pretty good. The nut incident makes me think things haven't changed all that much....
@ At -- Their safety record has been good the past decade, and I think that's largely also because they've started hiring expat pilots. So while they can change the specifics of pilot training, you can't change that Korean culture overall is very hierarchical, so you always listen to higher ups.
@adamh,
Echo that. Ice cream sales and crime rates correlate too.
I mean there have also been no Chase transfers in that time...
Correlation is not causation.
One part that has not been focused on, but is probably the most troubling, is that during her "incident" she was able to command the captain to return to the gate and unload the purser while allowing the person creating the disturbance (Cho) to remain on board. Even worse, the Korean regulators allowed this to go as they said he had no choice but to obey!
This, more than anything, makes me worry that the culture of safety at Korean is lacking....
@ Atif -- Well, to a large extent this has been focused on, and the general culture of following orders from higher ups is what has led to Korean Air's abysmal long term safety record.
The crash of KE8509 is the perfect example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Cargo_Flight_8509
So that's hardly new, unfortunately...
Personally, this story has increased my desire to fly Korean 1st for those infamous macadamia nuts.
Looks like the pro-Cho crowd wasn't nearly big enough to replace the anti-Cho crowd. I'll admit that the nut rage incident did in fact leave a bad taste in my mouth.