The United States is still recovering from a recent spate of winter storms, which pummeled the nation with extreme cold, snow, and ice. The biggest blow was the large number of flight cancellations over a busy holiday travel period. As of this writing, there were 2,950 reported flight cancellations. Southwest airlines was responsible for 2,549 of those flights.
Of course, there are passengers who are speaking out on their experiences, stranded in airports without notice of the cancellations and little help from customer service. The Southwest pilots’ union are also speaking up about unresolved issues they noted over the years that likely contributed to this problem. Even the U.S. government has gotten involved and will launch an investigation. And now Southwest CEO is on the press tour taking responsibility, telling the public how they will do better, and trying to rebuild trust in the brand.
Now, I could use this writing to jump on the dogpile to kick Southwest for its failure here. I could delineate all the things that went wrong, which got us here to this result. No, I’m not going to do that. Instead, let’s do a quick chat about crisis communications.
Most organizations will have what is a crisis communications plan. Essentially, it is a document which tells everyone formally how they will respond in the event of a crisis. It includes the essential publics you will need to message, who will be responsible for communicating with them, and more. But more importantly, the development of that plan includes a crucial step. You think of ways to avoid the crisis in the first place.
In this case, it seems that Southwest’s highly efficient point to point system works perfectly in the good times. This allows them to run more flights more efficiently than any other airline. That is until they can’t. It is a well-oiled machine that can only continue to run if everything goes to plan. The recent weather event threw a whole host of contingencies the company was not prepared to deal with. Their biggest strength left them more vulnerable than other airlines.
I imagine if the CEO could jump in a time machine with this knowledge, he would probably change some operations to better prepare for this moment that will likely impact Southwest’s profits for some time to come. But you don’t need a time machine. You can instead look towards the future. Start thinking now of some potential issues you might deal with and how you would go about successfully addressing them.
A Wren Says 