Valentine’s Day, 2007, a winter ice storm hit New York. Weather conditions were being predicted to cease and people continued about their travel day to John F. Kennedy airport. The conditions never cleared and and many passengers waited for up to 6 hours to return to an open gate traveling in. That day only 17 of the 156 flights left which left many passengers frustrated, furious, and stranded. It seemed to be a disaster for management who was trying to figure out what to do. Even pilots, flight attendants, and staff from the airport who were staying in the in NY wanted to help but there was no direction as to what management was going to do.
Eventually management had decided to give their passengers who waited more than 3 hours full refunds and a free voucher for a round trip flight. They also issued the Customer Bill of Rights which offers explicit compensation for passengers who involuntarily have to take a different flight.
Overall, I think that what JetBlue could have done was perhaps have an emergency backup plan when weather conditions do not cease. It is always extremely important to have a backup plan just in case the unfortunate happens. JetBlue publicly apologized for the mishap and it seemed to be made a bigger deal than it actually was. Yes, weather conditions and delays happen. However, if they publicly apologized and had a compensation system in place it would have been significantly cheaper for them.
If you were a manager of JetBlue, what are your ideas and strategies into dealing with the mishap?
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5880.html
These kinds of situations tend to happen more frequently then one may assume. While upper management could be finding more cost efficient ways to deal with such situations, in many cases there is anything they can do. While paying for peoples hotel or refund on plane tickets get pricey, one solution could possibly be providing customers with alternative routs such as train or bus. Which of course would be paid for, but still would provide options and cheaper ways of dealing with situations such as these.
Personally, I feel it isn’t the airlines fault for weather delays and they should not be held responsible for putting customers in hotels due to weather. If their plane experiences a breakdown and must be grounded for several hours that is a different story. Acts of God are of no control to the airlines. My recommendation is to partner with nearby hotels close to airports to provide discounted rates to the passengers who are stranded. Again, they shouldn’t foot the bill but having a partnership with a hotel would bring more revenue to the hotel via gift shop and restaurants that providing discounted rooms to stranded passengers would make up for it.
This is why I think it is so frustrating to fly sometimes. I have never ever had a pleasurable experience with United. If I were at the corporate office of JetBlue, I would have made sure that we had better planning. Bad weather is bound to happen! Having a backup plan for passengers is essential to survival in the airline industry. If you do not take your passengers into consideration when planning then I see more failures that successes which results in an inefficient way to run a company. They should have made deals with other airlines who have more planes and experience with flying in bad weather. JetBlue has fantastic advertising and is supposed to be one of the best airplanes to ride, from an entertainment standpoint, but if they cannot follow-up with providing accurate service to passengers then I don’t see why people would want to fly with them. Did they see a drop in the 3rd quarter earnings?
Weather mishaps are always uncalled for now matter how much you check the weather channel, there are always chances that they could be wrong!
I don’t think that there is much else that they could have done other than provide the compensation that they did. That clearly shows that they care about their customers and choose to prioritize their needs.
I feel it is not the airlines fault for the weather mishap. Although they took a public blame, I feel all that was necessary is giving the customer a voucher for another trip. It was no one in the organizations fault for the weather delays. Giving compensation to the customers does show JetBlue values its customers choices. In the long run, it will lead to many more long time customers.