EPISODE 5: Nothing to Declare - Airline(s) Meltdown - Southwest, Westjet, and Sunwing Holiday Failures
02/23/23 • 46 min
In this Episode, Mark and Brady explore the Holiday Airline mayhem that gripped North America.
Discount Canadian Airlines Sunwing and Westjet stranded passengers and lost baggage. In the US, Southwest - an airline renowned for customer service, culture, and profitable performance - cancelled an enormous level of flights, and ultimately revealed major failings of underinvesting in communication technology.
In all cases these airlines failed on the front of following crisis communications best practices, with spotty and slow responses. The Southwest failure resonated so deeply that it featured in a lead sketch in a Saturday Night Live Sketch.
Tune in to hear what went wrong (and right) in terms of these corporate communications. Will these brands ever recover? How?
Also, check out these supporting articles if you want to dig a bit deeper:
SUNWING
WEST JET
SOUTHWEST
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/business/southwest-flights-canceled-travel.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/26/southwest-airlines-luv-earnings-q4-2022.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64362249
PEARSON
In this Episode, Mark and Brady explore the Holiday Airline mayhem that gripped North America.
Discount Canadian Airlines Sunwing and Westjet stranded passengers and lost baggage. In the US, Southwest - an airline renowned for customer service, culture, and profitable performance - cancelled an enormous level of flights, and ultimately revealed major failings of underinvesting in communication technology.
In all cases these airlines failed on the front of following crisis communications best practices, with spotty and slow responses. The Southwest failure resonated so deeply that it featured in a lead sketch in a Saturday Night Live Sketch.
Tune in to hear what went wrong (and right) in terms of these corporate communications. Will these brands ever recover? How?
Also, check out these supporting articles if you want to dig a bit deeper:
SUNWING
WEST JET
SOUTHWEST
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/business/southwest-flights-canceled-travel.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/26/southwest-airlines-luv-earnings-q4-2022.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64362249
PEARSON
Previous Episode
EPISODE 4: Evidence Based Practice Part 1 - Mad Cow and US Beef
In this episode, Brady and Mark delve deeper into Benoit's image restoration theory through a 2012 case study on US crisis communications about food safety following incidences of Mad Cow disease in the food supply. Mark and Brady also discuss Elon Musk, FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, the birth of evidence-based medicine at McMaster University and Dr. Gordon Guyatt, Prion / Protein Diseases and 'This Week In Virology Podcast.' They also discuss the merits of Grammarly.
The article Mark and Brady discuss in detail gives an occasion to discuss evidence-based crisis communications as a concept, where there is a rich academic literature of case-based and theory-based studies to draw on.
The article in question:
' The failure of ‘scientific' evidence in Taiwan: a case study of international image repair for American beef.' by Chun Wena, Tzu-hsiang Yub and William L. Benoit. Asian Journal of Communication. Vol. 22, No. 2, April 2012, 121139
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01292986.2011.642393
OTHER LINKS and RESOURCES:
This Week In Virology, episode 950: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-950/
Elon Musk / Tesla / Twitter articles:
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/12/tesla-is-on-the-way-to-becoming-the-mypillow-of-cars.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-truth-hurts-11670706720
Thanks for tuning in, and catch you next time when we explore the 2022 Winter Holiday airline failures of Southwest Airlines and Canadian discount carriers.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
EPISODE 6: Working the Beat - Toronto Mayor John Tory Resigns, Flare Airlines, and Case Studies
In this Episode, we examine the sudden resignation of Toronto Mayor John Tory after it was discovered he had an affair with a staffer some 30 years his junior. Interestingly, his approach marks a return to ethical and old-school crisis communications and accountability that is worth studying. We also review the handling of an emergency landing by Flare Airlines, and how their communications team was quick to soothe affected passengers and lessen media scrutiny.
We also try something new in this episode: running scenarios on imagined case studies to illustrate best practices. We are ultimately looking at providing some downloadable resources and other support for companies that inevitably encounter what could be a win-or-lose crisis moment.
A letter to Toronto Mayor John Tory by Journalist Steve Paikin:
https://www.tvo.org/article/a-letter-to-john-tory
CBC on Flare Airlines:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2171391555969
Also, Tesla fire statistics (less frequent than gas-powered):
https://insideevs.com/news/584722/tesla-car-fires-statistic-2021/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-crisis-beat-533836/episode-5-nothing-to-declare-airlines-meltdown-southwest-westjet-and-s-69040439"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to episode 5: nothing to declare - airline(s) meltdown - southwest, westjet, and sunwing holiday failures on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy