Airlines sometimes send luggage to the wrong city, but in this case one airline sent a child to the wrong state.
This is not how you want the first line of a major news report about your company to look. Continental Airlines recently “lost” a ten-year old girl who was flying alone to visit family via their unaccompanied minor program. She was re-booked and rerouted the same day, but her family suffered, panic stricken, for over 45 minutes as the airline struggled to figure out what had occurred.
Now, you would think that as a major corporation operating nation-wide, Continental’s crisis management planning would have included such a possibility, but you’d be hard pressed to believe that from their response. Their offering, which should have gone above and beyond to not only restore the family, but also the public’s faith in the safety of their programs, was nothing more than a refund of the $75 fee the family had paid for the unaccompanied minor service. And even though this happened a couple of weeks ago, you won’t find a word about it at Continental’s website, where an apology should have been published. Trial lawyers are probably falling all over themselves to get the family’s business.
JB
Jonathan Bernstein
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com