Kudos To Alaska Airlines For Sincere Apology

Airlines mess up sometimes. When they do, the reaction is often to shift blame and deflect criticism. But Alaska Airlines did something refreshingly different after a rough weekend in Seattle.

A trifecta hit Seattle at the end of last week. First, a staffing shortage. Second, huge crowds and full flights. Third, bad weather. The result was thousands of bags were not loaded, separating travelers from their belongings.

Alaska could have blamed the weather, something like: we are sorry if your bag was delayed due to the bad weather. Those half-hearted “apologies” are really not apologies at all.

Instead, Alaska Airlines issued a genuine apology on its blog:

First off, we sincerely apologize to our guests who endured considerable inconvenience and understandable frustration at Sea-Tac Airport over the past two days. With many different factors working against us, we dropped the ball, and by doing that, created an awful holiday travel experience just when people rely on us the most.

Put simply: a severe staffing shortage during a very heavy travel period, as well as difficult weather conditions, unleashed a cascade of problems for us, and – unfairly – for our guests.

Starting Friday morning, we did not have enough ramp workers in place to successfully handle the holiday volume of baggage. A backlog quickly took shape and that prevented many bags from being loaded on flights ultimately causing our guests to arrive at their destinations without their checked bags.

We simply did not have enough people to do all the work. This caused us not to operate our gates efficiently and kept our aircraft out on the tarmac waiting until gate space opened up. We have called in many management employees from across the company to assist with the baggage backup and recovery.

I don’t know about you, but isn’t that refreshing?

CONCLUSION

Alaska Airlines truly messed up last week. It should have planned for the worst instead of hoping for the best. But the fact that it owned up to what happens reflects well on Alaska.