There is a video going viral at present, showing a passenger on a United Airlines flight being removed with force for not off-boarding when asked due to an overbooking error.

The incident has also now been the subject of a parody by late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel.

While there are numerous media reports covering the incident and speculating upon what went wrong. From my perspective, most miss one fundamental issue.

According to reports at hand, the United Airlines flight, was being operated by Republic Airways with a Republic crew who were apparently following United's rules and procedures.

This last piece of vital information seems to have been lost in all of the media coverage, but it is United that are having to weather the media storm.

While right now, based upon the information to hand, we don't know what exactly went wrong, however there is one thing that appears very clear. The actions of a third party looks like it will have significant consequences for the organisation that chose it as its outsourced (or code share) partner.

Third party risk management is not a simple process of issuing a questionnaire at the time of on-boarding. Its an ongoing process that requires continual monitoring to ensure policies are being implemented as expected, training is taking place and that adverse actions, reports and incidents are immediately brought to the attention of the responsible in-house team.