Doing Whatever Works

On April 14, 2014, a passenger on an American Airline flight tweeted about her frustrations after the plane sat on the runway for an hour causing the flight to be delayed. American Airlines responded to the tweet apologizing for the delay but the passenger was simply not satisfied with their response. As a result, the passenger responded to their tweet by saying: “yeah, you seem so very sorry. So sorry, in fact, that you couldn’t be bothered to address my other tweets”. Followed by this, American Airlines responded with the following tweet: “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you detail it here for review and follow-up:” and an extremely inappropriate photo attached of a toy plane inserted in a womans private part. The airline of course sincerely apologized for the tweet, however the inappropriate photo had already left many social media users shocked.

The airline responded to the situation with a tweet offering their sincere apologies and explaining that an investigation has begun into how the image was tweeted out. A spokesperson later explained that the tweet was a result of technical difficulties. The company was attempting to have the picture removed from twitter but the photos URL was linked accidentally to the tweet that was sent to the angry passenger. Although the response to the inappropriate tweet was quick and it offered an apology, I believe that the airlines response is a result of canned content. In my opinion, it seems as though the airline did what was expected of them to do in these situations and nothing more. I felt that the apology was very scripted. It felt like a typical, standard apology offered by the many other companies that have faced similar situations. Although their second explanation of the situation was carefully analyzed to offer a clear clarification, it did seem to be too long after the situation had already happened. Social media users no longer cared about how the situation happened and were simply laughing and mocking the fact that it happened in the first place.

I believe that if the airline took more time to consider their options and analyzed the best response to the situation it would have resulted in a much stronger and more impactful apology. The only response to the situation that felt planned and somewhat sincere was when the spokesperson spoke out on how the mishap actually happened. They took the time and effort to investigate how the photo was posted which relates slightly to the concept of planned content. However, the explanation could have very easily been a constructed lie in order to further protect themselves. The statement also failed to offer a second apology, making it all the more scripted and impersonal. It simply was constructed to say: it was a mistake, it’s not our fault. Furthermore, throughout all of their apologies and explanations the airline failed to ever respond to the passenger’s complaint which initiated this whole situation. Perhaps by delivering a tweet to that user specifically would allowed for social media users to see a more authentic and personal apology offered by the company. It seemed as though the airline just jumped to the simplest and quickest response in order to cover their asses.