TL;DR: Some travel horror stories end with a lost bag; this one ended with a viral song and a $180 million hit to United Airlines’ stock price.
In 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll did what millions of travellers do every day: he checked his luggage with an airline and hoped for the best. The luggage in question was a $3,500 Taylor guitar in a hard case.
During a layover at Chicago O’Hare, a fellow passenger looked out the window and pointed out that United Airlines baggage handlers were tossing guitars across the tarmac. Carroll raised the alarm immediately, but the damage had already been done. When he eventually arrived in Omaha and opened the case, his worst fears were confirmed: the Taylor was cracked, bent, and about as functional as a decorative canoe paddle. Carroll filed a complaint, but United had a policy: damage claims had to be submitted within 24 hours. Never mind that he had already reported the issue during the layover. The rules were the rules, according to United. No compensation. No apology. No accountability.
Now, this is the part of the story where most people would give up. But Carroll had other ideas. As a longtime songwriter and frontman of folk-pop group Sons of Maxwell, he channelled his frustration into something far more potent than a complaint form: a song. A catchy, biting little country number called “United Breaks Guitars.”
He uploaded it to YouTube on July 6, 2009. Within 24 hours, it had 150,000 views. By the end of the week, it topped the iTunes music chart. The refrain “I should have flown with someone else or gone by car / 'Cause United breaks guitars” became an anthem for anyone who had ever been wronged by a faceless company and met with a policy instead of a person.
And United? United was suddenly very, very interested in customer feedback. A United executive called Carroll personally to apologise, and asked if United could use his video for staff training purposes. In an awkward PR manoeuvre, United offered to pay for the broken guitar - but the money wouldn’t go to Carroll. Instead, United would donate $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as a “gesture of goodwill.” Except it turned out that the Institute’s board included several United executives, and they used United for all their travel. The sharp-eyed public was quick to point out that United’s “gesture” was less goodwill, more tax-deductible loopback.
Meanwhile, Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars stepped in like a benevolent rock-and-roll fairy godfather and sent Carroll two brand-new guitars. In return, Carroll released not one, but two sequel songs, turning his grievance into a full-blown trilogy. While Carroll was busy giving TED Talks and writing a book (United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media), United Airlines tried to move on. They promised to “learn from the incident,” which roughly translates to “please stop sharing this video with the subject line LOL”.
Unfortunately, the lesson didn’t stick. In 2017, the hashtag #UnitedBreaksGuitars trended again. Not because Carroll had dropped a surprise fourth single, but because United made headlines for forcibly dragging a paying passenger, Dr. David Dao, off an overbooked flight. It happened (you guessed it) at O’Hare. And as the footage went viral, Carroll’s now-iconic protest song made the rounds again like a favourite old meme, dusted off and gleefully reposted.
By then, Carroll had become a kind of folk hero for customer service justice - a speaker, an author, a walking cautionary tale for what happens when companies underestimate the power of one angry guy with a guitar. In a twist of fate that feels straight out of a comedy sketch, United later lost his luggage on the way to a speaking gig about customer service.
Analysts estimate United’s stock dropped nearly 10% in the weeks after the video went viral, a hit that translated into roughly $180 million in lost market value. Not because of a strike, or a safety issue, or a global crisis, but because they broke one man’s guitar and didn’t say sorry.
