JetBlue

It’s funny how after talking last week about how poorly Southwest Airlines handled an apology, to see another small airline do such a bang up job. JetBlue had an incident where a winter storm resulted in over a thousand cancelled flights, and otherwise created chaos in the airport. Naturally, the reputation of the airline was tarnished with the incident. But instead of placing blame, making jokes, or letting it blow over, a very sincere video apology was issued by the company’s CEO David Neeleman. In a case like this it is incredibly important to assume the right tone. The affected customers must feel like the airline is sincere or their business could be lost forever. Potential customers need to feel like if this happened to them, they would be treated fairly. The message did just that. It was conversational, which made it seem more sincere. The CEO gave the message when a PR Rep could have easily done the job. Most importantly, it offered a solution. He promised that something on that level would never happen again. Southwest hardly offered this kind of response, and in fact it did happen again with them. Another customer was kicked off the plane for an offensive t-shirt. As if the first statement wasn’t bad enough, this just adds insult to injury.