English 420Y - Business Writing Online

After reading a few articles about the JetBlue crisis, I think the company was downright wrong it their decision making. Not thinking things through long enough did more harm than good in the long run. I read how travelers were stranded in planes for hours on the tarmac because the company did not want to pay the gate fees they would have paid had the planes been waiting at the gates. That sounds like a selfish company not putting their customers first. Granted they were trying to satisfy their customers by not canceling flights, but their number one priority should have been the safety of the passengers. Many other problems could have erupted while on the tarmac. Since there was no ventilation, people could have had asthma attacks, harmful bacteria could have affected the passengers as a result of non-working bathrooms, and people with diabetes could have had issues because the food onboard was running out. Personally, I think the company lost more business having planes sit out on the tarmac versus paying the gate fee or allowing buses to remove the passengers. It sounds like the CEO is all about making money and cutting costs wherever he sees fit. What I want to know is what were the other airlines doing? How did the other airline companies handle their flights before the storm hit?

There is hardly any correlation between the JetBlue crisis and the elements of Luntz. Few, if any, of the ten rules of communication were present within the article. There was a lack of communication after the passengers finally disembarked from the plane. I read even a day and a half after the “plane sitting” incident, people were still stuck at JFK airport trying to rebook their flights and all JetBlue had in response to that was an employee going around speaking through a megaphone of all things. There were also other employees going around taking questions from furious passengers and not knowing anything more than they did. Rule four, consistency matters, applied to this case only in a bad way. The company was consistent in giving people useless information like, “we are working diligently on the problem.” This rule is supposed to build customer loyalty, only it has worked against JetBlue rather than for them.

I plan on responding to the situation by using the appropriate elements that will be effective enough to expose the ethics needed. I also will bring awareness to the audience all within a professional manner by incorporating some of Luntz’s rules and taking in account some first hand experiences with the JetBlue situation, coming up with a cause and effect type layout.