American Airlines Crisis Management Reflection

During the American Airlines class period, I expected to hear a few different lines of questioning from the diverse representatives in the competitor group. I thought the advocate team did a deft job preempting anticipated questions surrounding their recent mishap that led to more than 15,000 flights being potentially cancelled because they lacked the pilots on hand to fly, as well as addressing the white elephant in the room pertaining to the NAACP’s recent travel advisory issued about American Airlines. Thus, when examining the performance of the competitor group given that some of their potential ammunition was neutralized, I saw fewer areas on which they could attack the advocate team.

Going down the line, the CEO of Delta intended to make a comment about the fact that while Delta’s employees are unionized, American Airlines’ are not, but alas, he was never able to make a statement during the class period. However, I did expect this individual to also press the team on American’s choice to not offer monitors in the backs of its seats, whereas Delta offers such amenities in most of its planes. I expected the CEO of Southwest to make unfavorable cultural comparisons to the team and executive given Southwest’s well-maintained reputation as a leader in employee engagement and happiness, and his question about American’s investments in employee relations was somewhat related to my underlying expectation. I thought that Oscar Munoz, the beleaguered CEO of United, might reference his company’s recent fiasco during which a passenger was forcibly dragged off of one of its planes, but this individual chose not to push the envelope in this capacity. The CEO of Alaska Airlines asked an insightful question to the executive about the motivations behind American’s recent share buy-backs, and given the finance background of this individual, this was generally in line with my expectations. However, I also thought that this CEO could’ve pressed the advocate team on American’s recent troubles with new uniforms for its flight attendants given Alaska’s problems with the same manufacturer, but unfortunately, this topic was not discussed during the presentation. Robin Hayes, the CEO of jetBlue, asked a good question about how exactly passengers and