ENG 204-001

I think that JetBlue was not prepared for the crisis. They were a smaller company that had more business than employees. I think that they should have acknowledged the fact that day that they were short and made an announcement and made a public apology. After apologizing, I think it would have been a good idea if they had compensated everyone’s tickets that were stranded on the flight. Even though this would have cost the company a lot of money, it would have not had them lose as many customers.

I don’t think JetBlue handled the crisis in an ethical way. In the Organizations, ethics, and public relations article when the head of a company needs to make an ethical decision they must think of their own personal values and morals. I think leaving people on a plane for 11 hours with freezing conditions is unethical. They should have allowed the passengers to stay in the gate while they waited for more planes and staff instead of having them wait on the aircraft. By doing that, they harmed their customer’s safety.

From JetBlue’s crisis I am more aware of how my personal and professional values will affect any decision that I make. As the articles talked about by effectively communicating with the customers what is going on during a crisis can make the situation a lot better. Using simple language will help the customers to understand what you are talking about and they will be able to tell if you are sincere. If you use complex language it will make customers more suspicious. When faced with making ethical decisions Organizations, ethics, and public relations states that professional values should be made up of advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness. While making the next project it will be important to communicate to the customers about the crisis without sabotaging their corporate name. It is imperative to communicate between the corporation and the customers.

In the reading, Ruff and Aziz, it was made clear that one of the greatest contributions to the road of recovery from monumental fiascos for large corporations and businesses is based on the attitude and response of the business in which humility is desired attribute. Ruff and Aziz uses examples from the 1996 book by Rory Knight and Deborah Pretty, The Impact of Catastrophes on Shareholder Value, to give explain the impact of humility in the differences of recovery from these major catastrophes.
One of the non-recoverd stories was of a chemical manufacturer in India that lost millions in revenue after an explosion that caused thousands of deaths. The company never recovered because no one wanted to have business with them after they developed a public view of being inconsiderate. According to the book, the company bickered with the Indian government over compensation instead of concentrating on the victims of the incident. In other words the company could only think of itself and the public was appalled.
The Jet Blue Airways crisis in February 2007 is a sharp contrast to the chemical manufacturer case. After the incident, Company Executive Officer David Neeleman created Jet Blue’s Customer Bill of Rights in which Jet Blue specifically stated compensation rates for customers flight delays and cancellations as well as full notification of said inconveniences and their cause. Another full fleged effort on Jet Blue’s part was its full investigation into the incident and following overhaul of the companies workings. Mr. Neeleman also publicly apologized to victims of the incident and gave a full account of what they had found wrong with their operating structure in the investigation and announced what he and his company planned to do to rectify the mistakes. These gestures of humility obviously have swayed the public because Jet Blue Airways is still in the industry and receiving business with customers.

While reading the first article, I found that JetBlue did try to handle the crisis as best as they could in some ways according to the ten rules of effective language. The first rule is: Use of small words, now according from what I saw on the previous assignment the people dealing with the situation where choosing the appropriate language of their customers. They use short sentences to explain and help the people that where standing around and waiting for their flights. One thing that JetBlue has to work on is the fourth rule: credibility is as important as philosophy, I know that this is a new company but in order to continue on with their business I think that after this crisis they my have to regroup and show customers that they are a credible company and will be consistence with their affairs with their customers. After the crisis JetBlue tried to offer something new, but I don’t think that it would have worked on passenger that had to wait a ridiculous amount of hours for a flight that eventually never left. I think that JetBlue tried its best to undo what happen in the situation, but by the time they figured everything out I thin k it was to late. Rule number six, sound and texture matter doesn’t necessarily seem relevant in this case. In the CEO’s apology he spoke every inspirationally and provide people with a visual of how things where going to change and ways to fix what had already happen. He also went into some of the challenges the airline faced and explain why this happen, so people with a lot of questions could finally hear an answer. In the end I think that jetblue handled some of the situations the best they could.

Now I do have to say that when it concerned the ethical treatment of HUMAN BEINGS, they could have found away to get the passengers off the plan or out of a terminal that did not have any heat (DURING A SNOW STORM!) I know that the airline has rules to follow, but I disagree with leaving people stranded or in an unsanitary airplane for 11 hours. Some should have thought about those people and the question,”Is this ethical?”

I think that we can learn how not to do a lot of things from the jetblue crisis, and how to think on your feet. Every service to people is based off of, “Making the customer happy,” and that is how I think I would handle a crisis, try your best to please the customer but try to follow the rules and handle the situation ethically. In the 10 rules above I think this is the best way to communicate and handle a situation.

After reading and watching some of the youtube videos and blogs about what happened to the jetblue company, I have to say that they were not prepared for a crisis like this. All of the other airlines had problems as well but not as large as the problems jetblue encountered. Jetblue was short staffed, overworked, and unprepared however, with all this said, I do believe that jetblue handled the crisis in the most effective way that they could. As the article “Be the Guy with the Megaphone,” said jetblue had extra employees roaming the gates and an employee with a megaphone going from gate to gate to keep people updated and their employees were sympathetic to the troubles of the passengers.

I do not believe that jetblue handled the crisis in an ethical way. The airline had never encountered a problem like this before, so no one had any idea as to what to do, and although they did the best they knew how that does not excuse leaving hundreds of passengers stranded in an airplane with freezing temperatures and non working bathrooms. As the article “Ethics in Public Relations,” said the company was following the law but not morals and by doing this they were really just looking out for their own needs.

A lot of valuable lessons can be learned form the jetblue crisis that can be applied to our cooperate projects. For example, one of the most important is that rules sometimes need to be broken in order to ensure the safety of the costumers. Jetblue should have found a way to get those passengers off the plane and out of the gate to an area that was heated and sanitary. Another lesson is to be apologetic and sympathetic to the costumers. No person in their right mind would want to get stuck in a situation like the jetblue crisis and naturally they are going to be upset. Every employee should make sure to be extremely nice and go out of their way to try and get the situation fixed as quickly as possible, despite the moods of the costumers.

I think that JetBlue attempted to handle the situation in an effective way and somewhat ethical way. On the day the crisis occured, they were neither effective nor ethical. They forced people to stay on planes and in terminals in inhumane conditions. In this case, they did the legal thing by not letting anyone off the plane. They did not however, do the ethical thing. I would have let the people off of the plane if it were up to me. I do not think the people would complain about being let off of a freezing plane.

In the aftermath of the crisis, I think they could have done a little bit of a better job in their response. I think the video on Youtube could have been a bit more proffessional. Parsons described the importance of being proffessional. The video was less than rehearsed. Since it was a week after the event, I think it could have been done with less errors especially by the CEO. I also think that there should have been more apology in the video than there was. There was a lot of gurantee and reassurance that that type of situation would never happen again but there was not much of an apology to the people who had to suffer through that crisis.

We can learn from JetBlue's mistakes however. I think that when we do the video we need to be sincere in our response to whatever crisis we may choose. We should also try to identify with the audience that was affected. I also think the memo to the employees should encourage them to be sincere when they interact with the customers. It should have questions that customers will likely have and answers to those questions.

One good thing that came out of the JetBlue crisis was their Bill of Rights. I think that it is good to have something in writing and then post it to show your customers that the crisis has been addressed and how it will be addressed should it occur again. Depending on the crisis we choose, it may be a good idea to create a Bill of Rights for the customers.

I do not think that JetBlue handled the crisis effectively at all, because they did not act professionally. As the Parsons’ reading says, there is a difference between being in a profession and being professional, although being professional is part of being in a profession. A profession entails being good at the service one offers, serving something more than one’s own needs, and going about all of this in an ethical way. The last characteristic of a profession mentioned, going about things in an ethical way, is part of professionalism. I think the quote used in the Parsons’ reading from David Maister best describes professionalism as “predominantly an attitude, not a set of competencies”. Maister also states that the idea of professionalism “implies pride in work, a commitment to quality, a dedication to the interests of the client, and a sincere desire to help”.
If we agree with Maister’s definition of professionalism, then JetBlue did not act very professionally in this crisis, not because they do not care about their customers, but simply because they were not prepared, and I do not think the person in charge was fully competent. I think JetBlue definitely showed that they cared about their customers at heart by calling in representatives to listen to the stranded customers’ complaints, making an apology message, and by trying to compensate the customers after the crisis. However, I was not involved in this situation, so I can more easily recognize JetBlue’s underlying intentions than can one of the JetBlue customers who was involved in the situation and highly upset with the company. The fact that JetBlue was unable to cope with the storms although other airlines could, customers were so highly inconvenienced in terms of comfort during the crisis, and that it took so long for JetBlue to recover from the crisis all blinded customers to any good intentions that JetBlue may have had. The JetBlue CEO’s apology message was genuine, but was not delivered effectively because the CEO was not skilled in public speaking and the video was not posted to the airline’s website.
I have learned from this crisis and my personal experience in customer service as a Walgreens employee that the customer must always come first, no matter what the dilemma is, and a corporate company should always plan ahead for ways to manage different crisis. It is very important to be completely truthful with customers because many driven people and the news pursue the truth in corporate crisis, and a company will keep many more customers if they do not try to lie to them. It is also important to always consider customers’ needs, safety, and comfort when a crisis occurs, because when a customer feels like they are being taken care of despite an inconvenience like JetBlue’s flight cancellations, the customer is more likely to be forgiving and feel included in the crisis by the company, rather than being on opposite sides of a battle.

I think it was difficult for JetBlue to handle this in an effective way. When I think about this case, I wonder if there was a correct and effective way to handle this situation. On one hand, they were not prepared for this crisis and because they were understaffed, there was no way to handle this crisis while pleasing the passengers. So during the situation, they did all they could. However, I think that they should have been paying closer attention to how rapidly their company was growing, and should have matched that growth with a bigger staff. That may have been a possible way to prevent such a scenario. In apologizing and dealing with the crisis in the manner which they did, I think that they showed how embarrassed they were as a company. By issuing the “customer bill of rights”, CEO David Neeleman’s public apologies, and his statement on what went wrong with the company’s infrastructure and what their plans are to avoid these mistakes again in the future, JetBlue showed their true regret for the incident and made sure their apology did not look phony.

It is tough to say whether or not they acted ethically. I don’t think they did only because the length of time that some of the passengers were stranded was just way too excessive. I understand some plane delays but I think after the first 8 hours, they could have sorted it out. However it was obviously not their desire or intentions to leave these poor people on the plane, so I find it hard to say they acted unethically. Again though, in the Parsons reading it says that when the head of a company needs to make a decision, they must consider their own personal values and morals. So, according to this, Neeleman should have been able to find a way to let the people off the planes after a few hours at most.

I think we can learn a lot about what to do and what not to do from the JetBlue crisis. I think that we can learn how to address a problem after it has occurred, by issuing an apology and pleasing the customers at really any cost. But we can also learn how to be prepared for situations. Sure sometimes things do not go according to plan, but actions must be taken to ensure the safety and well being of your customers.

I'm torn on whether or not I think Jetblue handled this situation correctly. It's true, they absoultey should have been more equipted to handle such situations, especially knowing how the weather can be, but in the article, "Be the guy with the megaphone and other lessons from a JetBlue meltdown", the writer explains some good steps that Jetblue took to attempt to put the customers at ease. By doing things such as having personal interaction with real people, having someone for the customers to vent to, and by having a number the customers could call for more information, I feel that Jetblue was doing what they could to help the situation. They could have handled the situation better, however, if they'd had more credibility. If Jetblue, for instance, had given more explanations and given their customers updates regularly, a lot of the confusion could have been avoided.

As for being ethical,I think that in the end Jetblue became ethical. Had the CEO not promised to provide the refunds and free plane tickets, or had he not followed up on them, he would have found himself in an acute rationalization. However, he knew he had to provide some sort of gift for the passengers that were robbed of their flights, and he came through with it, adding a national apology to it.

What I plan to take with me is to look at all aspects of a situation. Look at how the situation was handled while it was still in the crisis, see if the company was prepared for this type of crisis or had the tools needed to fix it. Then, see how the company reacted afterwards; did they compensate if necessary? Did they make an apology, or some type of public appearance, responding to the crisis? Were the people affected informed throughout the crisis, or where they kept in the dark about the steps being taken to fix the crisis? I will consider all of these questions, along with keeping all of the readings in the back of my mind to consider whether or not the correct action was taken to mend the crisis for the company.

In the Jet Blue crisis there was minimal preparation for the situation that occurred. Lacking large amounts of employees and have no plan led them to do the quickest and easiest responses, which was not how customers felt the situation should have been handled. Professionally JetBlue should've been more prepared. The lack of employees for dispatching and responding to pilots and flight attendants made it very difficult to call for immediate response to this crisis. It seems to me that it is a very unsafe decision to have a very large business operating with not nearly enough employees.
Ethically JetBlue did not offer its customers the necessary accommodations. Leaving customers on the planes in an ice storm would be very cold and very disgusting in a few hours. With minimal food stranded customers would certainly feel as though their rights were being violated. JetBlue should not have overlooked their emergency response plan.
A very important part of the reading was the point made in the Luntz article was that credibility is as important as philosophy. This sections of the reading explains that a brand must establish its credibility before people will become brand loyal. The philosophy of a company is of course going to be to treat customers as great as possible, but they must be able to prove themselves. JetBlue failed in this aspect and it cost them their credibility.

After all of this reading and videos, I think that JetBlue Actually handled the crisis well. If they were to not do anything then they would have been in the wrong but they hoped to the cry almost immediately. Public reaction is to take the situation and multiply it by every person who complained about it. Yes I think it is insane that the planes were held for so long, that though wasn’t the immediate problem which they sadly spent most of their time on alleviating, and yes that is a problem. When all a companies’ resources are focused on February 14th 2007 and as the days past they continued to apologies for February 14th 2007 and JetBlue stayed grounded because of it. Ethically I can say they should have given better food or they could have turned up the heat but in the end ethics are an afterthought. If I was in a situation like that I would focus on solving the problem, giving little snacks and activities wouldn’t be the first things I would consider. I think they did what they could, whether it was the best foot forwards or not is another statement but they did send help and advice. From what I learned and read number one planning and number two speed is important. With planning comes a clear and concise idea of how to deal with the problem and speed is for the benefit of the people and the press. Showing your face is a great way to know who you are blaming for the problem but also lets most know that the company is going out of their way to do something other than a memo or news story, Managing Communication in a Crisis talked about how it is important to be seen. Like it talked about in Words that Work Being clear in your speech as well as staying consistent with the information while in a crisis leads to less confusion and more legitimate problem solving.

It was clear that jet blue was not prepared for the events of the 2007 crisis. Their demonstrated lack of communication was probably jet blue’s biggest downfall when, not only handling the customer outrage after the crisis, but also handling the events that happened that day. In the parson’s reading, one of the decision steps is to decide what outcomes you want; (plan). I think this was jet blue’s first mistake. It seemed that they never expected something like this to happen and therefore never planned for it. They should have been prepared every minute of everyday incase weather worsened and they were stuck.

Another mistake of jet blue’s was handling the ‘angry mob’ of customers after the fact. I feel that, while they tried to communicate to their customers their sincerity and apologies, ‘I’m sorry’ only goes so far. One of the ethical decisions values is fairness. People love free stuff. Compensating the customer’s tickets for their jet blue flight and for any connections they might have missed would have been a great idea. While this might seem like jet blue would have lost a lot of money, if they really were a company growing as rapidly as they say, then their profits would have allowed enough extra money to maybe keep one customer flying on their airlines.

In the Luntz reading, rule number 10 is to ask questions. I think that jet blue should have taken drastic steps to find and survey all of their customers that were on the plane, all passengers of the other planes that were affected that day, management of other airline companies and then outsiders who might want to take a survey. This would not only benefit jet blue by giving them the ability to obtain tons of information on what they did right, did wrong or should have done, it would also show the public and possible former jet blue customers that they seriously do not want this to ever happen again.

In the Ruff and Aziz reading it talks about how a company should have a system in place, before a crisis occurs, that would allow for information to be passed along to the appropriate audiences. JetBlue did not have a system in place at all. Many companies have crisis plans and have informed employees of what to do and what steps should be taken in the event of a crisis, since JetBlue apparently did not have one in place everyone employed with JetBlue was left in the dark. In the Parsons reading it talks about professionalism and how closely that ties into ethics. It says that professionalism has to do with things like taking pride in your work, a commitment to quality, and dedication to the interest of the customer. Basically, imagine yourself as the customer and how you would feel in any given situation. Based on that I do not believe JetBlue acted in an ethical manner, leaving travelers stranded on an airplane for 8 or more hours is unacceptable. Not having the appropriate number of employees needed to run efficiently was another problem JetBlue had, a company can not expect that everything will run smoothly all the time and when the crises do come up the company needs to be prepared to handle them.

After reading Luntz’s excerpt from Words that Work, I was surprised to learn about effective communication and how the very first rule is to use simple words. I understand that when there is an ethical crisis you want to get your meaning across in the best way possible but the author proposed a thought, that by using very simple and cut/dry words you will have fewer chances of having any miscommunication between you and your audiences. When JetBlue’s CEO released his first press release, the company did so in a very impromptu format. I am making the assumption that one reason the PR department decided to release this style of video in a very simple format was to try to convey a very simple message to the public, a) that they are sorry that they made a mistake and b) that it will not happen again. While people can argue the effectiveness of this video, it did put across a point and he spoke to the audience through a readily available media format, youtube.com.

After reading Parson’s Ethics piece, I starting to think about some of the thoughts that the author proposed. One reoccurring theme dealt with the approach to an ethical PR dilemma, on every approach the final steps were- reevaluate your approach, and then make the decision. This step is crucial because when releasing a statement, you have to make compromises between immediately having a press release for the audiences to see/read and taking your time to make sure it is perfect. In the Coco-Cola example in Belgium in the Ruff and Aziz excerpt, Coca-cola did not fully evaluate the extent to which the audience would perceive their release and coincidently the company lost huge sums of money when the people did not buy their product due to lack of credibility. I understand that there are multiple types of press releases, immediate ones and formal releases after everything has been evaluated, but how do PR departments make the decision between immediately releasing information to the people, stockholders and non-stockholders, and waiting a bit later and giving a more detailed report? While some argue that the JetBlue's CEO ad lib internet video was hurried and lacking in professionalism, how does the PR department release a statement in a timely manner without loosing their ethos?

I don’t feel like JetBlue overall handled their crisis effectively. They were understaffed and should have known this, but apparently that reality didn’t hit home until their crisis happened and their lack of staff was thrown into sharp relief. At the time of the crisis (when people were stranded for hours in a cold terminal) the management did not act effectively because people 1) were stuck in a freezing terminal for 11 hours and 2) couldn’t even call the 1-800 number to get through to an operator because the lines were understaffed. However, I do feel like the apology issued by the CEO was presented in a direct and effective manner. But, that doesn’t change what happened.
Ethically, I also do not feel like JetBlue handled the crisis well. They left people on a terminal for 11 hours with no heat and no substantial food. What would have happened if one of the passengers was severely diabetic? Or, what if someone didn’t have a coat? People’s health and welfare were seriously endangered, and if something did go seriously wrong with one of the passengers, JetBlue would have a massive lawsuit to deal with. Also, this was entirely unnecessary because the man who stated that the passengers could not be let off the terminal for security reasons was mistaken. I’m surprised that no one double checked that guy and figured out his mistake.
For my personal use in our project, JetBlue’s enormous mistake shows me that 1) people working in a group (such as a corporation) should double-check each other on important decisions and assertions; 2) time is of the essence, and reacting quickly and effectively in a crisis (both to fix it and apologize for it) is essential; and 3) don’t mess around when people’s health is involved.