One of the biggest current headlines is the October snow storm that pummeled the northeastern US. This week it has been hard to escape coverage of trees being downed, electricity failures, and other related news of weather crises.
In the eye of the storm coverage we are once more seeing Jet Blue defend its treatment of passengers on a flight grounded in Connecticut due to the inclement weather. It’s déjà vu. Once again, like the 2007 incident which resulted in a plane full of people abandoned on the tarmac for eight hours, this time around it was a mere seven hours. Both situations left passengers without food, with limited use of the restrooms and confined in a tight and crowded space. The first go-round warranted an apology from the CEO, David Neeleman, which for all intents and purposes sounded sincere. He called himself “humiliated and mortified” by the failure of procedures that caused such an extended and poor response. He was quoted as saying “we had so many people in the company who wanted to help who weren’t trained to help.”
Neeleman made his media rounds after the 2007 crisis. The Provisional Model of Crisis Communication was clearly used to explain the happenings of the event. There was transparency on where the weaknesses were within the company at the time. There was clear ownership of what went wrong- and confidence that the company knew exactly how to fix it. There was a sense of discourse of renewal in his words, “This is going to be a different company because of this,” Mr. Neeleman said. “It’s going to be expensive. But what’s more important is to win back people’s confidence.” (NY Times) As a CEO he stepped up and did the right thing by promising better for the future.
Jet Blue described this week's circumstance as an "unusual combination of weather and infrastructure issues.” However, storms are not unusual, nor was this storm a surprise. It was anticipated and talked about for days prior to the weather event. And given the aftermath of 2007 incident, I would expect that the company had grown from that time and had learned how to address such situations. I would have thought that crews on the ground would be better equipped to respond. I would think that a plan would be in place to serve the stakeholders, which in this case are the passengers as customers and the employees on board. I’m not sure where that plan was and if the 2007 failure prompted a real resolution to accommodate the stakeholders who are put in such situations.
This time, even the pilot of the plane shared his desperation and disapproval of the conditions. "Look, you know we can't seem to get any help from our own company. I apologize for this, but is there any way you can get a tug and a tow bar out here to us and get us towed somewhere to a gate or something? I don't care. Take us anywhere," the pilot said. Infrastructure issues were obviously a problem, but the type of problem that should have been prepared for in a crisis management plan. There needs to be an infrastructural response when weather events impact their industry.
David Neeleman has not been nearly as proactive with the media this time. There is no apology on their website, but a much more callous rebutal of this weekend's event is described on the company blog. How should the company be responding? Is a blogged apology enough? Is it perceived as genuine at all? Did they learn anything from 2007?
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