Three lessons from American Airlines’ big blooper

When an American Airlines passenger died in-flight earlier this year resulted in a public outrage, the airline’s attempt to rescue its reputation fell flat on its face. Two days after the death, American Airlines decided to honor a stewardess for saving the life of a passenger on board a flight – three years ago!

What already sounds like a bad attempt at generating positive PR turned much worse when the stewardess blatantly rejected the award, at the ceremony, instead spilling the beans on bad management practices at the airline. All this in front of shocked executives and ever-eager media. Check out the stewardess’ interview with MSNBC, after the incident.

So what’re three key lessons from this blunder for American Airlines and others?

  1. Never, ever try to get PR for the sake of it. American Airlines’ corp communications executives seemed to have a knee-jerk reaction when the passenger’s death in-flight created an overflow of public sentiment, both in favor and against the airline. To create some positive press, they dug up the incident of a stewardess saving a passenger’s life, but didn’t care about the fact that it happened three years ago. The idea was probably to create credibility by getting the media’s attention. But, as we all know it now, the plan failed miserably. They would have been much better off just accepting the fact that the incident happened, and probably coming up with guidelines to better handle such situations in the future. Losing the trust of the customer is probably the last thing a company wants to do.
  2. Take good care of your employees. Something that comes out very clearly in the video is that this stewardess was very unhappy with the management. She seemed to be on the bench for almost two years because she wasn’t enjoying her job and “didn’t feel safe”. The importance of happy employees can’t be emphasized enough. As mentioned in a previous post, employee morale directly rubs off on the customers. Companies in general, and especially airlines, should make extra efforts to keep their staff happy.
  3. Listen to your employees. It seems that the stewardess’ pleas for improvement fell on deaf ears, and that’s why she stopped flying. It might be a biased opinion, but there is hardly any smoke without fire. So much frustration probably cannot build up unless she’s been totally ignored. Though it may not be possible to accommodate every suggestion, having a proper channel for employees (and customers) to voice their opinions and also get a personal response from the management is very important. It’s not crucial whether the suggestion is implemented or not, but the fact that it is heard makes the person feel important. And that’s what matters.

Ponder that!

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Links:

  1. Death on-board American Airlines, Gladling
  2. AA stewardess rejects award, Gladling
  3. Happy Crew = Happy Passengers = Great Brand, SimpliFlying

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