JetBlue Nightmare

In February of last year, one of the nations most economically savvy airlines who was most noted for special attention to customer detail, experienced a PR disaster. 1000 flights were cancelled in 72 hours due to the companies lack of support in severe weather conditions. This not only left customers angry and out of flights, but also caused 71 flights to remain on the tarmac for approximately 6 hours. The story read like the ending of a corporation that had prided itself on the best quality for its customers at lower prices. When faced with a crisis such as this, most would think the CEO would simply get on national television and apologize for the catastrophe (with hope they could save some of their already tarnished image.) In this day and age times are changing, with no respect to the world of public relations. JetBlue being such a young and vibrant entity decided to handle this in a very non-conventional manner, that might have eventually saved the company.

CEO David G. Neeleman decided to reach customers through a personalized message posted on YouTube. This methodology that had rarely been used, ended up being called one of the best apologies by a company in US history. This PR innovation demonstrated that the company truly knew how to reach their customers. It expressed a companies sincerest apologies, while also guaranteeing a company overhaul. Not only did this spread like wildfire by word of mouth, but it reached a multitude of national news stations and newspapers.



Mr. Neeleman was extremely clever in his decision to use this tactic in his companies lowest point. With a huge hit to the companies budget, they could not afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ad campaigns, press conferences and much less they did not have time to waste. This is PR innovation at its finest. It led the way for more companies to use the internet as a means to truly reach an age of people that base so much of what they hear on the internet. This was the most inexpensive way to reach the most people. JetBlue never gave excuses, always keeping the customer first which was key in revamping the companies image. Neeleman should be grateful of his PR department for coming up with the best method, and speech to turn a catastrophe into a minor earthquake.