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| Jet Blue Communication
Crisis Some crises can’t be avoided; especially natural disasters and the brutal weather that keeps airplanes on the ground. If you’re Jet Blue, you might call last Wednesday the “Valentine’s Day Disaster at Kennedy Airport.” Jet Blue has a reputation of excellent customer service. They’ve gone out of their way to treat customers with courtesy and consideration. One key to this past success has been the way Jet Blue communicates. All that seemed to change on February 14, as ten Jet Blue planes, filled with passengers, were stranded on the JFK tarmac for up to 11 hours. Jet Blue’s plan was, apparently, to hope the weather would clear and that the ice on the planes would melt. That didn’t happen. Word from stranded passengers--with food running out, restrooms reaching the limit and patience running very thin -- was that the crews on Jet Blue weren’t doing such a great job communicating. Updates were rare and inconsistent; in some cases, communication from the cockpit came an hour or more apart. Jet Blue passengers were not told ahead of time about the delays which might have allowed them to make other flight plans. To his credit, David Neeleman, CEO of Jet Blue, communicated in the only fashion acceptable given the poor performance of his team. Neeleman said, “We love our customers and we’re horrified by this. There’s going to be a lot of apologies.” A couple days later he called Jet Blue’s performance “unforgivable.” More CEOs should be this candid. Further, it took Jet Blue too long to communicate directly with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA of NY/NJ), which runs JFK, to let them know there was a serious problem. Passengers could actually see the terminal a few hundred yards away as the hours dragged on “without a reasonable explanation as to why they weren’t moving,” according to the Associated Press (AP). Finally Jet Blue officials reached out to the PA of NY/NJ nearly 10 hours into the delays. Passengers were ultimately evacuated by shuttle buses. Again CEO Neeleman, stated the obvious, “we should have called them (the PA of NY/NJ) sooner.” (It took less than 30 minutes to get passengers to the terminals once the call was made.) The Jet Blue fiasco demonstrates how even solid organizations can be clueless when it comes to developing a practical communication plan for when things go terribly wrong. It appears Jet Blue plan was playing the odds. They seemed to be saying, “We’ve never had a delay of much more than an hour, so what are the odds we will have planes sitting on the tarmac for 10 hours? Why develop a communication plan to deal with it?” The truly great organizations plan for worst case scenarios. David Neeleman’s candid comments are helpful but they may do little to help Jet Blue’s terribly tarnished reputation. Passengers said the worst part of this experience was the lack of consistent communication from the cockpit and crew, which was unacceptable. One also wonders what the crews actually knew. It was essential they be given information so they could communicate to frustrated passengers, even if the message was “we don’t know when or if we will take off.” The long periods of silence in between announcements may have communicated more powerfully than anything that was actually said. The lesson of Jet Blue is a painful but important one; when it comes to communicating in difficult circumstances, plan for the worst and hope for the best. Anything less is playing Russian roulette. Dr. Steve Adubato coaches and speaks on the subjects of communication
and leadership and is the author of the book "Speak from the
Heart." Write to him at The Star-Ledger, 1 Star-Ledger Plaza,
Newark, NJ 07102, visit his Web site at www.stand-deliver.com,
or e-mail him at sadubato@aol.com.
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