JetBlue's Valentine's Day Blues

Many of you may remember the JetBlue snow storm crisis from this past Valentine's Day.

If you happened to miss the disaster, let me recap it for you. On February 14^th, 9 JetBlue planes full of passengers were stranded on the tarmac at the JFK airport for more than six hours each, as a wicked ice storm froze the plane’s wheels to the tarmac and much of the equipment that helps move and de-ice them. JetBlue was the only airline not to cancel flights. The planes couldn’t take off and there were no open gates to which they could return, so passengers sat on the planes for as long as 8 hours! Some of the planes weren’t heated, while others ran out of food, and the toilets got unbearably filthy. It was one of the worst cases of passengers being stranded on tarmacs in recent years.

A little background on JetBlue is that the airline began business in 1999 and quickly shot to the top of customer satisfaction surveys conducted by J. D. Power and Associates. For 2007 it was the top pick among low-cost carriers. This disaster was the first major crisis for the young company.

JetBlue had no previous planning in place for such an event, therefore, they had no contingency plans in place. However, once the disaster took place, it didn’t take long for a plan to come into effect. According to Guth and Marsh, this process of identifying issues as they emerge and preparing a timely response to address them is known as issues management (2005, p 7).

In David Weinberger’s book titled “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, he says “companies talk in bizarre, stilted ways because they believe that such language expresses their perection...This rhetoric is as glossy and unbelievable as the photos in the marketing brochure. Such talk kills conversation. That’s exactly why companies talk this way.” JetBlue however did quite the opposite.

As for communication, JetBlue’s target message was clear and simple: the company had made a mistake. Many other companies use these long, complicated, and drawn-out statements to make an apology. JetBlue took the more traditional route with issuing its apology. The PR spokesman simply said, “what happened on Wednesday was totally unacceptable”. Their main goals were to satisfy disgruntled passengers, get people to understand the company made a mistake, and change the cancellation policy for future flights.

David G. Neeleman, chief executive of JetBlue, said he was personally overseeing the airline’s recovery efforts this week and also acting as chief apologizer. This was a smart and strategic PR move by JetBlue. It showed that the most powerful person in the company was very concerned about what had happened. He promised that JetBlue would have to be better prepared to deal with freakish weather in the future. “We will change our operational strategy based on this,” Mr. Neeleman said. “We would prefer to be in control of how we compensate customers we have inconvenienced.”

Neeleman released a video clip outlining all the changes that JetBlue would be making in the days following. He said, “we are going to make some major changes in our organization to make sure this never happens again.” For JetBlue to state that the company made a mistake and then shows how they will overcome the mistake gains credibility.

Neeleman did an interview with NBC Today, explaining why JetBlue had such a big problem with this compared to other airlines.

The day after the storm, JetBlue announced that passengers traveling on the airline from February 15^th to February 19^th could voluntarily choose to rebook a different flight for travel through May 22^nd. If customers chose to rebook the same route for different days, JetBlue would waive all change fees and fare differences. This helped ease the blow of many angry passengers.

The Tuesday following the disaster, JetBlue announced a new Customer Bill of Rights. This was a great move
by JetBlue because it shows that the company had long-term goals for this
situation. According to Wilson, strategic planning and management needs to be built around long-term thinking as opposed to short-term (2000, p 8).

The evaluation can be put into tangible results through the number of customers that still use JetBlue. After reading several different blogs, including this one it is apparent that people are still choosing to the low-cost carrier. As you read, you will see that many people commented that the President’s apology on youtube and the simple fact that their flights are cheap are two good enough reasons to keep using the airline.

I believe that overall JetBlue did a good job handling the crisis. When it comes down to it, I would still fly JetBlue because of the low cost, but it better be sunny out! Would you fly JetBlue?