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JetBlue CEO Wins Top Grades for Crisis Management

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 22, 2007

JetBlue • JetBlue To Offer Refunds If You Lose Your Job • JetBlue To Sell Pillow and Blanket "Kits" • JetBlue Fires Its CEO • JetBlue Sits Out NY Storm While Others Fly • JetBlue CEO Wins Top Grades for Crisis Management • JetBlue Wants to be Travelers' Valentine Once More • JetBlue Unveils "Passengers Bill Of Rights" • JetBlue Cancels More Flights • JetBlue Offers Refunds, Free Tickets To Stranded Passengers • JetBlue Rips Out Seats • JetBlue Used Passengers as Guinea Pigs in Pilot Fatigue Experiment • JetBlue May Offer Airborne WiFi • JetBlue Finds Clear Air But Labor Trouble Looms • JetBlue Expands Service to Pittsburgh, Jacksonville • JetBlue Adds Boston-Washington Service • Jet Blue Launches New York-Boston Service • Judge Dismisses JetBlue Lawsuit • JetBlue Adds Newark Flights • JetBlue Tops Consumer Satisfaction Survey -- • More Travel News

The chief executive of beleaguered JetBlue is winning kudos from crisis management experts less than 10 days after the ice storm that put his airline into the deep freeze.

A contrite David Neeleman has issued profuse public apologies on network television, on the video-sharing site YouTube, on newspaper front pages, and on the JetBlue website.

He's not only offered millions of dollars in compensation but issued a consumer-friendly Passenger Bill of Rights, retroactive to cover the victims of the newest St. Valentine's Day massacre, with vows to enforce it.

He's told employees -- the prime target of customer wrath -- to put on the friendly face JetBlue patrons experienced prior to the Feb. 14 fiasco.

Most importantly, Neeleman has looked and sounded sincere in all his public appearances.

Crisis management experts have noticed.

"People see through it when the typical CEO hides behind the podium or the press release," said Bernstein Crisis Management president Jonathan Bernstein. "(Neeleman) gave the public ample face time and did so with passion in his voice. He talks the talk of everyman, which is exactly what he needed to do."

Fellow Californian Alex Anolik, a San Francisco attorney who represents travel agents and tour operators, agreed. He called JetBlue's Passenger Bill of Rights "a good PR move."

Richard Levick, president of the Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications, went even further. "JetBlue has run to the crisis, taking responsibility not just for itself but for the entire industry."

According to Levick, JetBlue's CEO met all five key tenets of sound crisis management:

1. Run to it. Avoid "duck and cover."
2. All companies will have a crisis. Be prepared.
3. Know your crisis team. Now.
4. Make a sacrifice. Companies often want to win it all.
5. Avoid saying "no comment." A crisis abhors a vacuum.

"The critical role is to run to the crisis," he said. Accepting responsibility with sincerity also may defray legal consequences.

"People don't want to sue people they like and trust," Levick noted. "What happens so often is that CEOs lawyer-up and say nothing."

Such actions often hurt the company, he said, because media reports are based solely on the reactions of victims and their elected representatives.

For his part, Neeleman admitted to being "humiliated and mortified" by the weather-caused snafu that kept seven flights on the JFK airport tarmac for times that ranged from six-and-a-half to nearly ten-and-a-half hours. Food, water, working toilets, and patience ran out.

It took six days -- and a total of 1,000 cancelled flights -- to get JetBlue's schedule back to normal.

Neeleman swears that won't happen again. Now he has to hope that prospective passengers believe him.

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