I haven’t been keeping up with events in the whole JetBlue Airways situation. In fact, I’d never heard of JetBlue prior to it reading about it on Todd Defren’s blog. Wikipedia gives a brief explanation of the attention the comany’s been receiving of late: “In the midst of snowy weather at John F. Kennedy International Airport on February 14, 2007, a JetBlue flight headed for Cancún, Mexico, was stranded on the tarmac for nearly nine hours as icing problems kept the plane from departing. Passengers were kept inside the aircraft for the full nine hours. JetBlue has since apologized, and has offered refunds and free round-trip tickets to the passengers involved. Throughout that day, several other JetBlue aircraft were also stranded and many JetBlue passengers were put onto flights that were already canceled.”
What is interesting (to me at least) is the way the JetBlue’s CEO, David Neeleman, has used YouTube to apologise to the company’s customers. Just under three minutes long, Neeleman claims that what happened will never happen again and states new measures they plan to put in place. As Shel Holtz notes: “Neeleman doesn’t read—in fact, he comes across as very human with a lot of “umms†as he speaks off-the-cuff, probably from a simple outline of things he wanted to cover.”
I haven’t read any of the coverage JetBlue has received in the press relating to what happened but I can’t see it being too good; not good at all. I imagine if the same thing happened over here with one of our well known airlines, a selection of the UK media would have had a field day.
However, the use of YouTube has allowed the company to put its own point across while at the same time cutting out the message gatekeepers – the traditional media. I remember reading a quote stating that in this day and age, every organisation (no matter how large or small) has the capacity to be a media company in its own right.
This is a good example me thinks.
technorati tags: jetblue, crisis+management, issues+management, youtube
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Juny Lee
Stephen, thank you for this posting. It’s quite interesting crisis management case. I also will post about this to my blog. FYI, I’m working in Edelman Korea now. Cheers!
Stephen
Hi Junny,
It is quite interesting, particularly the way JetBlue’s using YouTube.
Thanks for the link btw.
Owen Lystrup
I think JetBlue did an excellent job in responding. Obviously the company would not want this thing to happen in the first place, but as a response, the company’s CEO led the way in a very human, empathetic manner, which–I think–put a lot of customers at ease.
Companies could learn a lot from this.
Alastair McKenzie
I’m not surprised at this at all (I’ve been banging on about the role of the web in crisis communications for years), and I’m delighted to see such a good example of how to take control of, not only the crisis itself, but also the lines of communication and the message. Well done Jet Blue.
Interestingly, transport companies have (generally!) been ahead of the game on this. Most airlines, rail companies and cruise lines have emergency web pages and strategies in place for when accidents and incidents happen.
Many other industries don’t.