Southwest and Its Growing Problem
Well, it happened again. And it will happen again until brands finally understand they have to respond quickly and effectively to an incident so that it does not become a crisis.
Incident= Kevin Smith, the film director and avid twitter user, was forced off a Southwest Airlines flight because he is too heavy.
Evolved into an Issue: Smith used his twitter account (1.6 million followers) to rage against the airlines’s handling of the incident.
Evolved into a Crisis: Smith rallied many large people to the cause. Many others agreed with Southwest that some people are too large to fly in just one seat. The debate rages, and Southwest is in the middle of it.
Result: Southwest is now spending major resources on crisis control about obesity, and not spending that money on operating an airline. The Board of Directors must be thrilled.
It all started with a tweet on Twitter.
Dear @SouthwestAir from @ThatKevinSmith— “I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?”
And the pic he took just before being asked to leave the plane.
Photo just before he got off the plane.
Here’s the response from the company. Corporate, logical, and with no humanity in the voice.
“Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest. He decided to change his plans and board an earlier flight to Burbank, which technically means flying standby.
“As you may know, airlines are not able to clear standby passengers until all Customers are boarded. When the time came to board Mr. Smith, we had only a single seat available for him to occupy.
“Our pilots are responsible for the Safety and comfort of all Customers on the aircraft and therefore, made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight.
“Our Employees explained why the decision was made, accommodated Mr. Smith on a later flight, and issued him a $100 Southwest travel voucher for his inconvenience.”
48 hours later came this:
Southwest Airlines Blog Response by Linda Rutherford, VP of Communications
Better, but too late. Now, go here.
As mentioned, the issue has exploded. Now, my question is…where was the Southwest CEO, Gary Kelly, in all of this? When an incident threatens to become an issue the leader of the company has to become the spokesperson. And that person has to act quickly and decisively to put the issue to rest. Otherwise, the issue becomes a crisis.
In realtime social media 48 hours is too long.
And Kevin Smith has over a million followers on Twitter. Should that make a difference? Yes. Why? Because he is talking to 1.5 million people and what he says matters. Now, yes, he is a movie director and has a following…and that is the point. When you have that large of following, people are interested in what you have to say.
Oh, and by the way, about 12 hours ago a local news station reported that Southwest booted another person off a flight for being too fat.
You see the crisis is now news, and has taken a life of its own.
And another man has now been removed from an Air Canada flight because he smelled. And guess what airline was also mentioned?
A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
