Last Wednesday, unusually severe weather at its Atlanta hub caused a massive disruption across the entire Delta Airlines fleet, leading to more than 60 diverted flights and about 3,500 cancellations extending over five excruciating days.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, United Airlines bumped a physician from a flight from Chicago to Louisville. He resisted and ended up with a bloody face.
It’s hard to say how many passengers the Delta disruption impacted, but suffice it to say it was likely in the hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, the United commotion affected fewer than a dozen.
Which airline, therefore, had the bigger public relations problem? Which airline had the larger drop in its share price this week?
You know the answer: United. The social media outrage over a single mistreated passenger swamped the consternation of more impacted people than would fill the stadium of Delta’s hometown Atlanta Braves.
We could argue that Delta was simply extraordinarily lucky that a competitor’s mishap eclipsed its own – but that argument doesn’t explain how such a lopsided level of impact didn’t end up with Delta on the short end of the PR stick instead of United.
What’s going on here?
Read the entire article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/04/11/five-reasons-why-delta-beat-united-this-week/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: InSapphoWeTrust.
