I don’t travel by air that often. In fact, the last time I flew a commercial airline was before 2001-09-11, and I don’t plan to travel by air (at least via mass-market commercial airlines) anytime soon for a variety of reasons. However, I do keep up with travel-related news as one day I may be traveling by air again.
So it did and still does concern me greatly that United Airlines filed a SLAPP suit against a “consumer opinion” site called Untied.com (note spelling). (SLAPP stands for “strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”; basically, United is (ab)using the legal system in a lame attempt to silence one of the more prominent websites critical of their mistakes.)
I will admit I was a bit disappointed to hear that Continental Airlines was merging with United back in 2010. I had been at least nominally familiar with the Untied.com opinion site before that year. I had hoped that the corporate culture of Continental would prevail over whatever was causing so many unhappy passengers at United. Instead, some four years after the merger is complete, it turns out that now United is the only real choice for air travel on some routes. And, not surprisingly, Untied.com still has plenty to write about in the way of United’s poor customer service. So much for that hope I was holding out.
Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, I was not able to post this before the trial began this past Friday (2016-04-15). However, I believe publicity will still help, as a lot of the traveling public has not heard of Untied.com. So spread the word and make everyone aware first that Untied.com is out there, and that the airline they are criticizing is attempting to silence them with a SLAPP suit. It’s absolutely outrageous that in a Canadian province (Quebec) that supposedly has an anti-SLAPP law, United is still being allowed to press forward with a fairly obvious SLAPP suit.