American Airlines Recent "Oops"

American Airlines recently had a "oops" moment and almost had a severe marketing insistent on its hands. On Sept. 17, American Airlines flights were delayed for several hours and or cancelled due to a system malfunction. The malfunction came from a glitch in the organizations reservation system. This glitch caused hundreds of flights to be delayed and six flights to be cancelled completely.

Being that American Airlines did not immediately act and control the situation by releasing statements, the media quickly turned to the social media posts of those who were on the flights. Imagine, you and hundreds of other passengers are in a rush to get to your destination and are being told American Airlines has no idea how long the delay will take so be patient. Now take that uncertainty and expand that for an average of a six-hour delay. If I were a betting man, I would bet that American was about to receive a whole lot of negative publicity and reviews, which is exactly what happen. 

American finally realized the potential media disaster it could face and took preventive actions. It started to inform those directly affected by the flights, released statements to the media and more. The airline provided as much information as possible so that the media would be forced to stop reporting the negative social media posts. 

I think this was an incredibly smart move on its part being the extent of the delays. The company did not ignore the issue and let it play out in time; rather they acknowledged it and went into damage control mode. I feel it could have acted faster to avoid the initial reports, but that could also be because of it not having all of the information available yet to take those steps. If you would like to read more on this, please read Jad Mouawad's article from The New York Times, I found it to be extremely insightful.

Until next time,
Matt