As most of you should know by know, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Texas, USA and has caused quite a bit of disruption so far (current estimates range from between $8-25bn in damage costs!)…and most, if not all, of the city of Houston is without electricity/power.
In terms of aviation, all airlines that fly to/from airports in the region have been pretty badly affected because they have been forced to cancel all their flights…CO at IAH in particular becuase its a major hub for them, with a huge number of domestic and international flights due to depart/arrive!
I suppose my questions are…what will the airlines have to do in order to restore their services back to normal?
No doubt they will have a lot of aircraft and crew in the wrong locations, and also they will have a bit of a back-log of passengers that have been stranded.
To make matters even worse, because the cancellation falls under weather, which is a natural occurrence (or ‘Act of God’ as its known in the industry!) the airline cannot assume full responsibility for the cancellation of flights…what can they do for customers to limit the amount of damage done to their reputations?
By: Grey Area - 19th September 2008 at 17:16
Sorry, but God transcends legalities.
Ryan
So does the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
By: Arabella-Cox - 19th September 2008 at 17:13
Given the god doesn’t legally exist, these sort of excuses are just plain rubbish.
Sorry, but God transcends legalities. And He Does exist!
Ryan
By: mongu - 19th September 2008 at 05:16
Given the god doesn’t legally exist, these sort of excuses are just plain rubbish.
By: Arabella-Cox - 16th September 2008 at 03:06
Well certainly from a customers perspective, they will always seem to blame the airline whether it is responsible or not because they have been left inconvenienced by the cancellation, and no matter what the airline/staff do to help, they never seem satisfied with what is offered to them and always want something better or more than what the airline is prepared to offer in light of the situation. This makes some jobs like mine in ticketing/reservations even more difficult than it already is.
Also, I can imagine that some passengers will end-up choosing not to fly with that particular airline again, even though they cancelled the flight on the grounds of the weather and taking the safety of passengers into account.
Well, you’re obviously not from Texas (you can drop the USA ;)). I know, I know they’re showing ya’ll some of the stupid Texans on TV (annoying media folks), but really, I doubt that 2% of the customers will blame the airlines for this. The reaction in TX is a bit more “tough” than the LA Katrina deal. The airport I work at is one of the primary staging areas for rescue and recovery efforts. There’s a lot of work to be done, but the folks I know just want to be allowed back in to get to work rebuilding.
Ryan in TX
By: Whiskey Delta - 16th September 2008 at 01:51
The difference between a situation like what happened with JetBlue and with the Houston Airport is the lead time for the Hurricane was 2-3 days. Adjustments started happening days before landfall where JetBlue rather blindly walked into their weather situation.
Operations shutdown Friday at 2:00 pm and were originally scheduled to reopen Sunday morning but due to damages to the terminals the airport wasn’t opened until 8:00 am on Monday. That was a long time for Continentals largest hub to be shutdown. A lot of crews were stuck with aircraft at outstations until IAH reopened 3 days later. I originally was scheduled to go and sit in Mexico until the stormed cleared but a simpathetic scheduler released me and I grabbed the first flight out of the airport to get home. Whew. My 4 day trip nearly became a 7 day trip but (for once) things changed for the better.
By: tenthije - 15th September 2008 at 17:18
Since it was a “Act of God” why should the airlines reputation be damaged?
It depends. Last year Jetblue received a lot of flak for messing up during bad weather. And the blame was fully justified as well. Where other airlines took precautions and accepted fewer bookings and scheduled fewer flights, Jetblue continued as normal. The result was many flight cancellations followed by a ripple effect through their entire network. Other airlines where affected as well, but nowhere near as badly.
By: cloud_9 - 15th September 2008 at 09:28
Since it was a “Act of God” why should the airlines reputation be damaged?
Well certainly from a customers perspective, they will always seem to blame the airline whether it is responsible or not because they have been left inconvenienced by the cancellation, and no matter what the airline/staff do to help, they never seem satisfied with what is offered to them and always want something better or more than what the airline is prepared to offer in light of the situation. This makes some jobs like mine in ticketing/reservations even more difficult than it already is.
Also, I can imagine that some passengers will end-up choosing not to fly with that particular airline again, even though they cancelled the flight on the grounds of the weather and taking the safety of passengers into account.
By: glhcarl - 15th September 2008 at 00:32
.
…what can they do for customers to limit the amount of damage done to their reputations?
Since it was a “Act of God” why should the airlines reputation be damaged?
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September 14, 2008 at 11:48 pm