United Surprises Family of Olympian With Tickets to Pyeongchang

In a move deemed as part of a wider change in culture, United Airlines this week surprised the family of Olympic hopeful Bradie Tennell with tickets to see the figure skater compete in South Korea. This generosity comes as United’s Scott Kirby says that he hopes to make the carrier more caring.

The 2018 Winter Olympics haven’t yet begun, but Chicago-based United Airlines is already going above and beyond to offer its support to the family of local figure skater Bradie Tennell, the airlines-pulls-olympics-surprise.html?ana=e_ae_set1&s=article_du&ed=2018-02-01&u=kUqMFdqotpsdgbq8fykpGg01c89965&t=1517520895&j=79774291″>Chicago Business Journal reports. Earlier this week, the carrier’s Mary Moser arrived at the ice rink where the athlete trains in order to inform her that United will be flying Tennell’s mother and two brothers to PyeongChang just so that they can watch her compete.

The outlet reports that Tennell’s mother Jean works two jobs in order to support her daughter’s Olympic endeavors. This tenacity appears to have paid off and just last month, Bradie Tennell became the ladies’ figure skating champion after taking part in the 2018 United States National Figure Skating Championships. This win qualified her for the Olympics in South Korea.

Up until this week, Tennell’s mother and brothers had been hoping to raise funds for their plane tickets to the Olympics via a GoFundMe page.

However, it appears that United’s generous gift is indicative of a wider sea change at the carrier, which faced widespread criticism for a number of high-profile customer service incidents in 2017. In an announcement late last month, Scott Kirby, United’s president, said that he intends to make the airline more caring.

To this end, the outlet reports that, “Frontline supervisors came to Chicago last month to get special training designed to make them more caring and compassionate toward both their employees and United passengers. Rank-and-file employees are expected to get similar training as 2018 unfolds.”

Judging by Kirby’s remarks to the outlet last month, this compassionate outlook is here to stay.

This new training, he was airlines-has-plan-to-be-the-most-caring.html” target=”_blank”>quoted by the outlet as saying, “…is all about empowering our employees to do the right things for our customers and for each other.”

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