Update - Fri pm: United Airlines has decided to honour the $0 fares.
Original story starts here:
It hasn't exactly been an Indian summer for airlines with unsettled skies for a number of carriers especially when it comes to reaction to media coverage.
Is there something in the air?
First up is United Airlines, which it seems enabled customers to purchase tickets for nothing via its website yesterday. Reports say the airline is weighing up whether to honour the fares. Tnooz has requested further comment.
Fallout from the above could prove interesting, as four years ago, British Airways cancelled bookings of a $40 to India and, consulting with the US Transportation Secretary, agreed to compensate the passengers for 'losses they suffered'.
This meant the airline did not have to honour the $40 fare which would have been more than $700 in normal circumstances but instead reimbursed them for 'expenses resulting from having relied on' the fare.
Last week it was Thai Airways, which after an unfortunate runway incident, blacked-out the branding on its aircraft with reports quoting the airline saying it is a "crisis communication rule". Initially there was some confusion over whether this was a Star Alliance recommendation, which the alliance denied and Thai later clarified as its own policy.
The resulting media storm did everything but "de-identify" the Thai Airways brand.
Case (study) three is the recent British Airways/Twitter saga with a customer going to the lengths of buying a sponsored tweet to have a poke at the airline, again for lost luggage misdemeanors. It took BA about seven hours to respond on Twitter.
And last but not least, Air Berlin, which last month experienced a significant social media backlash to a lost luggage incident. The airline is reported to have taken off leaving the luggage of some 200 passengers behind on a flight from Stockholm to Berlin on August 9.
The passenger reaction was to flock to social networks Twitter and Facebook where a group was set up while others chimed in on an Air Berlin TripAdvisor forum.
And, over a period of about three weeks, passengers continued to complain about being luggage-less before Air Berlin filed an official response.
We cannot say there is any correlation, but it wasn't until the wider media picked up the story that Air Berlin issued its response.
So, do these incidents have any similarities other than the fact that they are all to do with airlines in the past six weeks?
Airlines are generally held-up as quite advanced in social media so it's curious to see so many #fails, whether epic or not, emerge in recent weeks.
So, here's a question - when all advice with social media and crisis management is to issue a response, as quickly as possible, whether direct to the person/people involved or to the public at large, how have these incidents got blown out of proportion?
Many will blame the media but had the airlines reacted quicker, the wider media would't have had a story to write about.
Another question - how could the carriers involved have handled things better? Is some immediate reaction better than no reaction?
Past experiences demonstrate that yes, a speedy response is the best way forward especially if you believe all that stuff about turning dissenters into fans.
And, it also stops other disgruntled customers from chiming in with 'brand, you suck'.
All these incidents also raise the question of who is talking to who - did the press or social media people know, for example, that Thai was going to black-out the logo?
Perhaps a leaf could be torn from the hotels sector with a Houston hotel recently gaining points for fulfilling an odd request for bacon and M&Ms.
Thistle Hotels, meanwhile, although it took a while to respond to a complaint on Twitter, it's reaction was thought out and effective once it did.
If anything, what all of this shows again, is that things get out, and get out pretty quickly so at very least travel brands need to have some sort of response mechanism in place.
We'll leave you with a few words of wisdom on the subject from Thistle Hotel's communications chief:
"Whilst you should have a specific plan for PR emergencies, like who ought to be involved and what their roles are, each situation is completely different and ought to be treated as a separate issue.
You can’t plan or write a manual for dealing with every eventuality.
In my view, you need an in-house person, someone more hands on centrally, to handle the response to an issue of this nature. Whether the monitoring happens internally or externally, the response should be handled internally."