And Yet Again…

I wasn’t planning on a follow-up to the post that ran on Tuesday of this week, but I stumbled across this story and just had to share it with you. It’s the same event, on the same airline, with the same cause, and the same comedy of errors resolution, although they don’t appear to have happened on the same day, at least. But somebody at Continental Airlines needs to have a serious talk with their Operations people…

In a virtual repeat of the Boston case, an 8-year-old girl flying from Houston to Charlotte (NC) was accidentally sent to Fayetteville (AR) instead. According to the story on the Associated Press online, the exact same scenario played out, with two regional jets boarding from the same gate at the same time, and the gate crew mixing up which aircraft was which when the unaccompanied minor was boarded. One might reasonably expect that after the Boston case Continental would have sent around a memo, or an email, or something, reminding its personnel that people are a little nervous about regional jets in the first place, and parents hate having to send minor children on airplanes unaccompanied, and don’t assume that this can’t happen to you, that’s what the poor bastards in Boston said…

Apparently, either they didn’t or the ground personnel in Houston are even more inept than their Boston counterparts – which is hard to accept, given that the company is headquartered in Houston. But regardless of how it happened, it’s a second occurrence and a third really bad public relations situation for Continental this year. It also provides us with a good example of how customer perspective actually works in practice…

Consider, for example, that Continental provides passenger service to a very large number of people each year. Suppose that out of the last million times unaccompanied minors traveled on Continental, these two are the only such cases; that the odds of any one minor getting put on the wrong airplane and sent to the wrong city are literally 500,000 to 1. To the families who were failed by the airline in this spectacular, news-gathering fashion, Continental’s record is still 0 for 1 – and likely to remain that way, since I don’t imagine either family is going to give then any additional chances. Some errors are just too much to accept, even one time, if you expect to retain your customers...

Now, by themselves these two families are not likely to have any serious impact on the company if they elect to use a different airline in the future. If they sue Continental, and if they recover anything of significance – which will be difficult, since there’s no real “damage” that has been inflicted on the parties involved – that will be another matter. Too many large punitive judgments and a struggling company in a beleaguered industry may not survive. But the real danger here is that if enough people get the idea that Continental Airlines is so completely oblivious that you can’t trust their commuter flights to get you where you want to go, or to avoid icing up and crashing short of the airport because their regional carrier crews are inexperienced and distracted, there will no longer be enough people willing to fly Continental at any price…

And that will be the end of them…