Sometimes businesses fail because of poor management or incompetent employees, sometimes they don’t work out because of outside factors and sometimes lady luck just takes an active dislike for them.
In the last two days, Continental Airlines Inc. (NYSE: CAL) had to face it all, misplacing two separate children on two separate flights yesterday and losing a pilot to natural causes mid-flight, on top of the tough conditions that it and its competitors have had to deal with for the last several years.
Anytime that an entire industry falls so badly that one of its big boys such as British Airways has to ask its employees to work for free for a month, it isn’t the friendliest time to make mistakes big enough to hit the national news.
While pricing comes in first on many people’s priorities lists these days, you can bet that a lot of parents won’t be putting their kids on any Continental flights for a while. Especially when a spokesperson for the airline blamed the mix-ups on “a “miscommunication among staff.”
I don’t know about you, but I check my ticket repeatedly before I get onto the plane. I check the gate, the little signs above the seating area, and listen to the announcements made, so shouldn’t each person who takes charge of a child traveling alone be doing the same thing? Especially when Continental Airline Spokeswoman Kelly Cripe affirmed via email that: “In both circumstances the children were supervised throughout the entire process…”
Of course mistakes do happen, and I get that. But two mistakes of this magnitude in a single day isn’t going to reassure finicky customers, anymore than knowing they were on a plane that the pilot passed away… while at the controls and miles high in the air. Flying is scary enough for some people without having to worry about situations such as that.
What the airline will say about this latest mishap - which I’m sure isn’t their fault - I’m not sure. But I do know that it offered a $75 refund to one of the parents of one of the children who ended up somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
Mistakes happen, but when they do, an intelligent business smoothes the situation over as best as it can. Offering a $75 refund for a misplaced child isn’t smoothing things over. That’s a slap in the face.
Incidentally, Continental Airlines is down over $0.50 on the New York Stock Exchange as of 12:30 today.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 - by Jeannette Di Louie, Assistant Editor, Mt. Vernon Research
