Jetblue Crisis Case Study

avid Neeleman founded the Airlines in 1999, and the airline was considered as the first “mega start-up” applicant in the nation with $130 million in equity capital (JetBlue, 2012). Its maiden flight took off in February 2000, by the end of that year, more than one million passengers flew with the airline (JetBlue, 2011). Before the crisis, among low-cost airlines JetBlue is ranked high in on-board customer satisfaction and on-time flight, more so, the airline was well-known for its customer-friendly reputation (Ostrowski, 2010). JetBlue expanded speedily across the nation, growing by 30% in a year (Maynard, 2008). Of all of JetBlue’s total flights in 2006, only 0.19% had more than 2 hours flight delay (Bailey, 2007). During the fourth quarter of 2006, JetBlue achieved a completion factor of 99.6% of scheduled flights in the fourth quarter of 2006 against its 98.9% in the fourth quarter of 2005 (JetBlue, 2012).
Analysis
Consequent to the February 14, 2007 JetBlue flight delays, the media reported the crisis in such a way that it set the stage for JetBlue airline to launch a reaction. Reviewing …show more content…
The strategy of corporate apologia as the only crisis response strategy would not be strong enough to address the crisis. Therefore in order to restore JetBlue’s legitimacy with customers, stakeholders, and general public, corporate impression was another crisis response strategy adopted by JetBlue to address the issue. The theory of Image restoration was also chosen for the response planning, JetBlue focused on strategies to help the organization restore and repair its image as a result of wrongdoing and also clarifying their actions during the crisis to customers and stakeholders. These multi-crisis response strategies provided JetBlue airline with the tactics to respond properly and appropriately to the