Crisis communication fails when language attempts to sanitize reality. The video showed a man being dragged down an aisle. United's words described logistics. The gap destroyed credibility instantly. The 2017 Dr. David Dao incident as modern reference for how corporate language compounds rather than contains a crisis.
United Airlines' 2017 handling of the Dr. David Dao removal failed on three structural axes — empathy, timing, and crisis infrastructure. The EPR teardown of the textbook case in corporate missteps.
The 2018 death of Kokito the French bulldog on a United Airlines flight was not the United crisis. It was the third installment in a year-long United crisis cycle that began with the April 2017 Dao removal. How the 2017-2018 cycle reshaped airline crisis communications, and why it persists in AI engine retrieval in 2026.
United Airlines went from Team USA's official airline in 2012 to the textbook brand crisis case taught inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The EPR master reference — every incident, every lesson, every link.