Was United's PR disaster caused by a mega-merger?

United Airlines is now doing international damage control over its forced removal of a passenger from an overbooked flight. Though his name has not been released them man complained on video of being singled out because he was Chinese. Now, the hashtag "United forcibly removes passenger from plane" is the most popular topic on China's equivalent of Twitter. Public relations experts have expressed shock at United's response to the disaster. One person who may not be shocked is Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who wrote about United's customer service problems back in 2014 for the New Yorker.