These 7 Seconds Show Exactly Why Passengers Think United And Other Airlines Just Don’t Care

Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

The Mercedes SUV, a United Airlines logo perched upon it, sits there quietly.

It’s likely waiting for the United Global Services customer who will shortly be getting off the United plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

Meanwhile the rest of the passengers’ bags are slowly being unloaded.

And how.

The first one rolls down the belt and tumbles to the ground. Another, a few cases behind, falls from the top of the belt, as if it just can’t take it anymore.

Did it jump? Or was it pushed?

Where are the baggage handlers? Nowhere to be seen.

The 7-second GIF, posted to Reddit by TwoPointZero_gpa has a certain symbolic, shambolic quality about it.

The passenger the airline really care about will get a Mercedes. The rest of them, ah, well, their bags roll unchecked only to end up, who knows, wrecked.

I contacted United to ask why this might have happened. The airline told me: “We are concerned by this video and are working with our team at O’Hare to make sure all appropriate action can be taken.”

Of course, it’s too easy to criticize airlines these days. This is principally because airlines have made it too easy to criticize them.

They trouser vast revenues, while at the same time seeming to believe that they should police passengers more often than help them or even serve them.

For United, the image of Dr. David Dao being forcibly removed, his face covered in blood, off a flight at, oh, O’Hare, has become the one for which the airline is now most known.

Naturally, this baggage joy is just one video, on one day at one moment.

So many bags are handled well and even efficiently. So many flights pass by uneventfully.

Yet here we are, staring at 7 seconds of footage that have already enjoyed more than 1 million views and more than 3,000 comments.

Why so many? Because these 7 seconds make people feel something. And it isn’t something good.