Page 237 - Social Media Marketing

delays—delays that occur after boarding and pulling away from the gate—to 3 hours. 215
Otherwise, steep fines kick in.
■ ╇ E ngagement as a B usiness Activity
On its face, and in particular from a customer’s initial perspective, the rule
looks fine. Who really wants to sit on a plane for longer than necessary? Even more so,
given—and I say this carefully and respectfully of all involved—the visible discontent
of the traveling public with the end-to-end flying process, many customers are all too
happy to see the airlines (as organizations) get hit with a harsh regulation.

From the perspective airline’s operational staff—and in fact from that of sea-
soned travelers as well—the rule looks very different: Airlines will (now) be stiffly
penalized for on-ground delays, so the rule introduces yet another risk into a business
system that, like most business systems, is designed to reduce risks or at the least to
understand and control and price for them. Businesses routinely trade risk for revenue/
margin rewards. In the case of 3-hour rule, it adds the risk of a financial penalty into
the system.

From the airlines’ perspective, this added risk means that for flights that had a
chance of leaving—albeit delayed—the “sure bet” is to simply cancel the flight. The
financial penalties, if the 3-hour limit is crossed, can greatly exceed the total revenue
value of the flight itself, so canceling the flight begins to look like the better option.
Obviously, a cancelled flight is at odds with what most passengers actually wanted in
the first place, which was of course to go someplace. In the end, everyone loses.

Airlines will very likely do the obvious thing: If there is a chance of a lengthy
delay—that is generally caused not by the airline but by the airport, the air traffic
control system, or weather—the flight will simply be cancelled, avoiding the risk of
a potentially large, and unknown until after the fact, fine. Shown in Figure€8.4, the
immediate response—requests for exemptions, for starters—are headlines as the rule
is challenged. Reactive and punitive rules rarely help in business: Instead, appealing to
and collaborating with customers to develop a better solution is the way to go.

As a result of the 3-hour rule, airline marketing and communications managers
will no doubt be pressed to explain the increase in flight cancellations to passengers,
further straining relations as a “blame game” ensues. Making matters worse, the num-
ber of flights delayed, along with the average delay time, will likely drop as a result of
the legislation—driven down not by more people arriving on time (the intention) but
rather by the removal of the longest delays—including those associated with flights
that might may have faced a lengthy delay—from the underlying calculation of aver-
age flight delay. On the one hand, passengers will see advertising claims for improve-
ments in on-time performance as airline marketers one-up each other citing these now
recalculated figures, and on the other hand these same passengers will be more likely
to directly experience an actual flight cancellation. That will make for some tense
moments in the airports.