After our discussion of the JetBlue case, my wife told me she was confused: why did we make such a big deal out of an airline apologizing to its customers? “All I want to do in that situation is get home. It doesn’t matter what they say,” she told me. My gut reaction was to assume that maybe things are different in her home country of Spain; maybe folks in America just take our relationships with companies and brands more personally. But as I started to respond to her, I realized that I, too, was of two minds on the issue.
It got me thinking about my own experiences with air travel. When I worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross, flying was a regular part of my job. In Afghanistan, we operated our own aircraft — two 14-seat Beechcraft turboprops, affectionately nicknamed “the Red” — to move our staff and beneficiaries around the country. In other operational contexts, our needs were covered by commercial flights. In the hundreds of times I flew for work, I probably experienced every possible failure or hiccup that an air traveler can.
So when my wife questioned whether it was really necessary for the CEO to beg his customers’ forgiveness, the first thing I thought of was the frustration I have felt whenever a major flight delay or cancellation threw a wrench in my week. Objectively, these were never extreme situations. At worst, I missed an important meeting or lost a bit of (scarce) personal time. But when I wake up at 4 only to wait at the airport for six hours, I’m not above resenting the person who thanks me for my patience every hour — or, for that matter, the company they represent. In that situation, an apology doesn’t fix my problem, but hearing someone take responsibility for the situation would make me feel a little better. I think that’s a perspective that David Neeleman understood intuitively.
Thinking back to my time in Afghanistan, I could also see where Joel Peterson was coming from, when he counseled Neeleman against his apologetic speaking tour. Even though I experienced more delays and cancellations flying on the Red than I ever did flying commercially, I never once felt resentment toward the staff operating the flight.
One time, I had to fly from Helmand province back to Kabul. After the first leg of the flight, the pilots informed us that we would be grounded indefinitely — during takeoff, a rock had struck and damaged one of the propeller blades. It would be a few days before a replacement could be delivered and installed. That was bad news for me. I was tired from a rough week. More importantly, I had plans with a pretty girl I had recently met. So I was eager to get home. But frustrated as I felt, I just unloaded my rucksack from the plane and got on with it. A pain in the neck, I figured, but it comes with the territory.
So what was different? The plane was operated by my people. I knew the guys who ran the airport logistics, and I knew the pilots well. We had flown together enough that I knew that air operations don’t actually run like clockwork on most days. I also knew that they would do everything they could to get us home quickly. And even if I didn’t really understand why a chipped propeller blade was such an issue, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, because I trusted them. My weekend was not very restful, and I missed my date. But at no point did I feel that they had let me down.
Had I stood in Peterson’s shoes in the aftermath of the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” I know I would have been tempted to focus on my own and my employees’ commitment to superior service. And if, one day, I find myself in Neeleman’s place, I hope I can remember that my customers do not get to see behind the curtain; they don’t have those personal relationships with the ground crew or the pilots, and they don’t have the sense that we’re all in this together. They are at the other end of a transaction. They paid me to get them from point A to B. When I fail dramatically to deliver on my end of the bargain, it’s reasonable for them question whether I can do a better job next time. After all, your customers are expressing a lot of faith in you, when they board a 300-ton flying gas tank with your company logo on its tail fin. Safeguarding that sense of trust is a top priority.
You may be wondering what happened with the girl in Kabul. Eventually, she forgave me for standing her up that weekend. We got married in 2015.
