Investor's Business Daily, June 29th, 2007
It was a night to remember.
When JetBlue Airways stranded hundreds of passengers on two planes on the runway at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport during a Feb. 14, 2007, snowstorm, it suffered a public relations disaster that nearly sent it into a tailspin.
Upscale fliers were stuck in their jets for more than 10 hours. It gave them a Valentine's Day they'll never forget. Not only was there no candy, but there wasn't much food or water either.
What's JetBlue, which launched in 2000, done to restore its reputation? How can JetBlue win back its passengers, many of whom lost trust in the airline?
JetBlue JBLU didn't return calls to tell its side of the story. But experts say the lessons learned were hard ones.
The big takeaways are that carriers must plan for the unexpected and quickly acknowledge glitches when they happen. They also mustn't dawdle in telling the public what's being done to fix the problem.
JetBlue didn't follow all these rules. Its reputation sank so low, David Letterman joked that Americans were sad to see Queen Elizabeth leave, but she hadn't left yet because she was flying JetBlue. When your airline becomes the butt of jokes, it's time for a change.
It wasn't lightning fast, but change did arrive at JetBlue on May 10 when David Neeleman relinquished his CEO position (he remains as chairman) to Dave Barger, an 18-year executive with Continental Airlines CAL and the old New York Air. JetBlue's stock price also crumpled, declining more than 35% from 16 to below 10 since the snowstorm. It's now trading close to 12.
Besides Barger, JetBlue tapped a new chief operating officer and several marketing and operations experts to fix management.
The new team has its work cut out for it. Following in the footsteps of industry leader Southwest Airlines LUV, the only consistently profitable carrier, JetBlue billed itself as the airline that would "bring humanity back to air travel." Just before the debacle, JetBlue ranked No. 4 in customer service in all industries based on a J.D. Power survey.
Part of JetBlue's problem is the high standard it set for customer service in the past. JetBlue had become known for its "friendly people, reliable, responsive and empathetic service. They didn't even lose your bags," says Valarie Zeithaml, a professor of marketing at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School who writes about service recovery.
Despite its reputation for customer service, JetBlue was a disaster waiting to happen, suggests Agnes Huff, whose eponymous Los Angeles-based communications firm has worked for British Airways and U.S. Airways, but not JetBlue.
JetBlue didn't have the "appropriate procedures in place to enable it to deal with chaos or a disaster easily," said Huff. "Because of its rapid growth, systems and procedures weren't ingrained to handle a weather issue of that magnitude."
To offer discounted fares, she says, JetBlue carried a streamlined staff that couldn't deal with unexpected events.
New York tabloids plastered its front pages with tales of how passengers were crying and chaos reigned because the story resonated with readers, Zeithaml says. "Individual people can imagine being stuck on the tarmac for 10 hours," she said. "The personal distress makes it newsworthy."
JetBlue's problem wasn't so much the Feb. 14 snowstorm but what happened in its aftermath, says Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation research and consulting firm based in Evergreen, Colo.
"The issue was, for days afterward JetBlue couldn't recoup. They didn't have the systems in place. JetBlue grew so fast that it didn't have the infrastructure," Boyd said.
Furthermore, having part-time housewives in Utah handling the reservation desk also contributed to the airline's inefficiency, he says. By contrast, when Frontier Airlines FRNT canceled flights due to a snowstorm in Denver, it was flying the next day.
Irate bloggers on the New York Web site Gothamist.com chimed in, noting that 861 JetBlue flights were canceled four days after the Feb. 14 meltdown. One writer asked, "Will you avoid flying JetBlue after this incident, or do you chalk this up to a freak accident?"
To respond to the PR debacle, CEO Neeleman appeared as a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman," apologizing profusely for his airline's mishandling of passengers. He said JetBlue flies 18.5 million people a year and only 10,000 were affected by the storm. On Feb. 20, less than one week after the storm, JetBlue issued a key PR salve: its customer bill of rights.
The bill promised customers they would be notified of delays prior to departures. They would get a $100 voucher if delayed for over an hour and a voucher for a free flight if delayed for two hours or more. To fix the problem, JetBlue vowed to train 1,300 people to handle emergencies.
Not every communication expert believes that issuing a bill of rights was an effective tool. Huff says issuing a pledge sustained the story and didn't address the issue at hand: JetBlue's operations and service. "They kept the story in the news and kept apologizing," she says. "What they should have done is move on from the crisis to normal operations, which is running an airline."
Some of JetBlue's problems revolved around the way CEO Neeleman, the airline's founder, defined his job. "He wasn't involved in day-to-day operations issues," says Zeithaml, the marketing professor. "He focused on marketing, but running an airline involves one gestalt including operations," and that led to Neeleman's downfall.
After issuing its customer bill of rights, what else could JetBlue do to restore trust with the public? Zeithaml says it must treat every passenger who gets on its planes with the utmost good service. For frequent flyers, it should offer something special such as free upgrades. Advertising won't work because it's often seen as self-promotional, she says.
Huff says JetBlue should invest in employee training. The real problem with JetBlue was its customer service.
"When everything was going well, JetBlue performed admirably," said Huff. "But when there was a bump in the road, they weren't prepared sufficiently and didn't have the depth of operations."
What can airlines and others learn from JetBlue's PR disaster? "Airlines can learn to alert people before they come to the airport that a snowstorm is coming. And then don't let people on the planes," Zeithaml said.
