These United emails reveal how terrified the airline has become of its customers

In May, United Airlines completed the rollout of its new Basic Economy fare class.

The value-minded ticket option has been the subject of great controversy since it was announced late last year.

Designed to compete against the bare-bones product offerings and rock bottom prices of ultra low-cost carriers, the fare was targeted at a very specific group of budget conscious shoppers.

In fact, United CEO Oscar Munoz told Business Insider in an interview earlier this year that Basic Economy is "not for everybody" and that the airline would even prefer its customers go with the full-service fare.

For those who have fallen in with the Basic Economy crowd, the restrictions are significant. While the in-flight experience is identical to United's regular economy product, Basic Economy passengers cannot pre-select or upgrade their seats, are limited to a single personal item in the cabin, and must be the last to board the aircraft.

Due to its notorious limitations, United has made the need to effectively communicate with their passengers a priority.

"We have a lot of mechanisms to make sure when you buy that ticket you fully well know, you ain't getting bags, you ain't sitting together with your family," Munoz said in the February interview. "We are going follow up. We are going to do all those different things."

Since the interview, however, the need to make sure that everyone traveling in Basic Economy is there on their own volition has been kicked into high gear.

On United's part, the level of communication between airline and customer is rather extensive. Prior to purchasing the ticket on United's website, a pop-up window appears explaining the features of Basic Economy. The pop up remains until the customer acknowledges he or she understands the limitations of the fare class.

After purchasing the ticket, United will then send out a series of emails reminding passengers that their ticket is indeed a restricted Basic Economy fare, detailing the limitation of the fare class, and finally a reminder that they have 24 hours to ask for a refund.

The importance of these emails and reminders have become exponentially more important due to two developments.

First, United's public image has taken the beating of a lifetime over the past couple of months. Although much of it is its own doing, no airline in recent memory has had to battle such an unrelenting onslaught of bad press as United has since April. Not even General Motors' 27 million car safety recall, Ford/Firestone's tire separation crisis, and Volkswagen's 11 million car emissions cheating scandal could rival the pop culture and political furor generated by United's treatment of Dr. David Dao.

Even though United has worked hard to battle back since the scandal with a host of policy changes and reforms to the way the company treats its customers, their public image is at best on thin ice. This means the last thing the Chicago-based airline needs is angry parents ranting en masse about not being able to sit with their families or business travelers complaining about being charged an extra fee to gate-check their carry-on bags.

This brings us to the second development. Basic Economy has proven to be unexpectedly popular.

United Airlines CFO Andrew Levy said this week that 30% to 40% of the airline's economy class passengers have gone the basic route, Skift reported.

Which means the scale of the operation needed to manage Basic Economy has increased dramatically.

Sadly, even with the reminders, some of United's passengers have taken to twitter to complain that they were either unaware of their ticket's limitations or simply didn't know they had purchased basic economy.

"We tried to make it very clear throughout the process that the customer knows they are choosing the basic-economy fare," a United spokesman told Business Insider's Cadie Thompson.

With Delta and American's basic economy operations up and running as well, it will be a matter of time before the wider flying public understands the fare class. After all, roughly 85% of United's customers fly with them once a year or less.

Until then, all United can do is fight the good fight and hope for the best.

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