Northwest Finally Figures it Out

It took them a long time, but Northwest finally figured it out. Blaming your employees for your problems does NOT garner customer support.

As you’ve probably heard (especially if you live in the upper Midwest), Northwest has been having tremendous cancellation problems at the end of the past two months due to crew shortages. When this problem first occurred at the end of June, the airline put out a statement saying “as a result of several factors including air traffic control restrictions, severe summertime weather and a higher than normal level of pilot absenteeism, Northwest’s mainline scheduled operations have been negatively impacted.”

Of course, blaming pilot sickouts for your problems is not going to go unchecked. ALPA immediately shot back saying it wasn’t true, and for the millionth time in the last couple years, the Northwest pilots were angry at management.

Now let’s come back to this week. Doug Steenland, head of the airline, has been on the summer apology tour. He says the airline is sorry, and he’s changing his tune in regards to the pilot situation. According to an interview published in the Detroit Free Press, the airline is recalling laid-off pilots, hiring new ones, cutting flight schedules, and modifying union work rules to allow for more schedule flexibility.

Does this sound like the moves of an airline that is running a poor operation solely due to pilot sickouts and weather problems? No way. But more importantly, do customers (which I have horribly stereotyped in my picture as a bunch of Vikings) care? Again, no way.

See, for some crazy reason, it doesn’t matter to most of the world why their flight was canceled. All they know is that their flight is NOT getting them where they need to go and they’re going to miss their cousin’s wedding, their nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, or their dog’s graduation from training school (clearly, I’ve lived in LA too long).

As a customer, when I hear Northwest blaming its pilots, I DON’T CARE. Just friggin’ get me where I need to go. Remember the summer of 2000 where United’s pilots actually did cause the airline to meltdown? Do regular customers care? NO. If you can’t get the plane where I need to go on time, I walk away from the airline regardless of cause. It took United a long time to regain some of those customers they lost while others never returned, and nothing would have changed were it management’s fault instead that time.

So now Northwest is finally saying, “Gee, instead of blaming people, maybe we should accept responsibility and fix the problem.” Congratulations on figuring out the most basic of things. The public will not feel bad for you regardless of the cause. If you blame pilots correctly, the public still won’t care. If you incorrectly blame the pilots, all you’ll do is anger your work group. Then again, I suppose morale at the airline couldn’t get much lower, so they probably didn’t have much to lose on that front.

The point is, as if I haven’t been clear enough, just fix the problem. Don’t bore me with why it’s broken. JUST FIX IT. Hopefully this round of apologies is a signal that they’re actually going to do it.