- There's survival as an enterprise,
which is typically a
financial cash flow kind
of an issue,
and then there's the
survival of the brand.
We had a dream that we could
really bring humanity back
to air travel.
I thought oh my gosh, here we
have really stubbed our toe
on our most fundamental proposition.
We're just like everyone else.
(playful music)
So on Valentine's Day 2007,
JetBlue had an event
that marks our history
and we hate to have to keep revisiting.
But we stranded a bunch of passengers
on the tarmac at JFK.
A storm came in that was freezing rain.
And actually what happened
was the tires of the aircraft froze
to the tarmac. (ice cracking)
And the planes couldn't be moved
so planes were landing
but no planes could take off.
The runways were like glass
and so we were unable to get buses out
to get people off of the planes.
And that meant people were stranded
for seven, eight, nine hours on planes.
Within the terminal,
crowds were building up
and getting more and more
anxious and boisterous.
Our general counsel went down
and I remember him telling me
that he had to stand up on the counters
with a bullhorn to try
to settle people down.
I do know that it takes a long
time to rebuild a schedule.
Once you've grounded planes,
once planes have built
up in a certain area,
it takes time to get them dispersed,
to get your passengers out again.
So it took several days
to rebuild the schedule.
At this time, I was the lead director.
I was not in town at that point in time
and couldn't have gotten into town.
So I heard about it
as was brought in by telephone
to talk to people and was
quite concerned about it.
David Neeleman, who had founded
the airline, was apoplectic.
And he wanted to fix it
and make sure that I never happened again.
He then proceeded to go on all
of the talk shows and apologize.
There were several of us on the board
that thought gosh, we're
no worse than anybody else.
We just happen to be a
large carrier at JFK.
We happen to be the hometown airline
and I remember pulling him aside
and saying, "David, enough apology."
But he felt so bad that he
went ahead and did that.
And I think he was right.
I think he actually
helped restore the brand.
I think the immediate role of the board
is to make sure that we solve
the problem on the ground.
Beyond that, we have to ask the question
is this something that could happen again?
So the board decided fairly early on
to bring in an outside consultant
to go through all of our
systems, top to bottom.
We set up this internal team
of 100 people from all
walks to look at IROPs.
IROPs are irregular operations
and they're typically
triggered by weather events.
But I think what we found
in doing our own analysis
of IROPs was that we could do better
at communications, at scheduling,
the nuts and bolts of running the airline.
The second thing is we
brought in outsiders.
They also said, "Hey, there's some things
"where JetBlue needs to grow up."
So those weren't any of the things
that caused the problem,
they just said, "You know, if
something else happens again,
"and you have not addressed
some of these problems,
"it could get worse for you."
What happened at that time
exposed several vulnerabilities
that would have developed
into future problems
and we just really felt
like we're at an age
and stage now that we
actually need to address those
and we didn't have confidence
that David would be the
best person to address them.
So we did what any board
of directors has to do
is choose the CEO of the company.
David was not removed because
of the Valentine's Day storm.
In fact, all it did was expose
some vulnerabilities we had
and when we did the internal review
and an external review,
we really thought it was
time to make a change.
I think a lot of people thought
it might be over for JetBlue.
We had so much negative press.
But I think David's sincere apology,
I think our Customer Bill of Rights,
I think the changes we
made to handling IROPs
to addressing the overall situation
with growing an airline rapidly,
I think we quickly recovered our brands.
So the major takeaways
for me are to communicate.
You almost can't over communicate.
A second one is there's an impact
of any of these kinds
of events on your brand.
We had to really think
about how do we make sure
that customers trust us again?
To me, the most important
thing for managers
is to remain calm,
to listen, to be thoughtful,
not to lose it, not to be frantic.
You need to deal with it seriously.
These are important events.
But how you manage them, how you behave
will really be recalled
long after the event.
(plane roaring)
