Solutions For Real-Life Strategic Problem For Services

The Sunstate Airlines

Discuss about the Solutions For Real-Life Strategic Problem for Services.

The media plays a significant role in enhancing positive or negative publicity of business organizations. As much as business organizations would opt that their image be portrayed in a positive way to the public by the media organizations, they should also realize that the media is not expected to be biased. The role of the media is to create awareness to the citizens with regards to practices and activities that directly and indirectly affect them. The activities of business organizations are in every sense a concern of the public given the provision that the citizens obtain consumer goods and services from these business organizations. Due to this, the public is entitled to be offered with any kind of information relating to both the good and the bad business practices of the organizations which serve them. This report will identify one business organization in Australia that has been featured in the Australian media in a negative light; it will then seek to come up with findings relating to the cause of the negative publicity portrayed by the Australian media and the various ways in which this problem(s) can be solved.

The Sunstate Airlines is currently being tarnished by bad press not only in the Australian media but in the other international media networks as well. The cause of the negative media portrayal obtained by this organization can be divided into two categories. The first category constitutes the initial reason that led to the occurrence of the whole scandal. The company is being accused of overbooking and allegedly mistreating a passenger (Hill 2017). Overbooking involves taking in a larger number of passengers than the airline can possibly accommodate. Overbooking is a quite common phenomenon among most international airlines. In most cases, it is usually blamed on system failure or incompetent workforce. However, the results of Sunstate Airlines’ overbooking scandal have cost this organization a great deal of reputation (Kennedy 2017). In similar vein, the positive perception this airline had from its customers and even competitors has quickly faded away.

On the April of 2017, the airline is reported to have overbooked flight 3411 and this resulted in the employees forcing some passengers out of the plane. This incident was all over the media houses and news platforms both in Australia and all over the world where the organization serves. The media avers that soon as the passengers had settled in the plane and they were ready for takeoff, the airline’s management announced that the number of passengers present was more than the plane could accommodate. The plane was allegedly in excess by four passengers (Barron 2017, p. 23). As such, the company required that four passengers had to step out. What the other passengers could not understand was the fact that all the seats were well occupied and there was no one left standing without a place to sit.

Scope of the problem

In response to this confusion conveyed by the flight’s management, the company announced that the excess passengers were its employees who were commuting to work. It was on a Sunday evening and therefore, the likelihood that a greater percentage of the passengers were going to work the following morning was very high (Nicas 2012). What the passengers could not understand was why four of them had to give up their flights to work, for a bunch of late individuals who were also going to work just because these individuals were apparently employees of this airline. Besides, there were no rules that supported the proposition that passengers who had made earlier bookings were entitled to give up their flights for the airline’s employees no matter how important they are.

This situation started with an individual from Sunstate Airlines announcing that four passengers would have to give up their flights or else, United will rely on its computers to randomly select the four passengers. This decision was made after the company offered to give each of the passengers who would be willing to give up their flights $800 and none of them accepted this offer (Waldmeir 2017). In normal sense, $800 may seem like a fair deal, but when the passengers realized that it could mean missing a full day’s work without a compelling excuse, they bailed out on the offer. The strategy that the company proposed to do in regards to using the computers to select four random passengers to leave the airline is very unfair and unprofessional.

The video that has already gone viral online shows that a man, who was later confirmed to be a doctor, was one of the people who were selected to leave their seats. He however, refused to leave his seat claiming that he had patients to see the next morning. The drama that followed after the doctor refused to give up his acts as a basis of what has really placed Sunstate Airlines at the front row of negative publicity in the media (Powley & Buck 2017, p 4). The company allegedly called its officers to the scene; the officers violently removed the doctor from the fight. The doctor goes by the name Mrs. Smith. He was literally dragged from his seat. The worst part about this incidence is that this was an old man reportedly, 69 years old who was getting treated like a rogue murderer. In the process of being dragged from his seat, the doctor was screaming from under his seat. The dragging was so severe to the extent that he ended up breaking his nose and losing two of his front teeth.

Methodology

The Australian media states that Mrs. Smith was rammed on his armrest so hard while being dragged and all this time, the other passengers were taking videos of the scenario. Considering the effects of negative publicity to a business organization, the main problem does not involve the actual incidence that caused the negative media publicity. Instead, the actual problem stems from the consequences of the organization’s actions. The profits recorded by this firm went to a sharp decline within a very short period of time after the incidence gained public attention (Dye 2017). For instance, the shares in the airline’s parent company have plummeted ever since by close to $1 billion. Other consequences include a boycott threat from Australian flyers, a parody commercial from various Australia’s late night talk shows and most importantly, a lawsuit from Mrs. Smith.

In order for the media to publish any negative content about an organization for the public to view and read, there has to be sufficient evidence. There are numerous media platforms in Australia which have taken it upon themselves to conduct extensive research with regards to the situation involving Mrs. Smith and the Sunstate Airlines. The collection of the information on what transpired on that Sunday evening was mainly done through interviews with the passengers who were in the flight at that time.

A total of 20 respondents were interviewed. Each of them gave their own account of what happened. In the findings, the media organizations established that the storylines were all basically the same. However, they did not fail to point out some of the evidence provided by the respondents that was a little bit exaggerated maybe in a bid to punish the Airlines for their vulgar behavior as pointed out by Dye and Samson (2017, p. 89). It should however, be noted that only the legit evidence collected was used for the prosecution of the company on the media networks.

In order to justify the negative publicity and to ensure that the evidence collected was reliable, Australian media companies took the necessary legislations into consideration. For instance, the grounds for the release of the recorded videos of the doctor being dragged out of his seat in the flight in national television were evaluated under the constitutional laws. They did this in order to make it certain to the public that this was not an attack on the company (Mann 2014). Instead, this was an effort by the media Australia media companies in trying to protect the public against bad organizational practices such as the ones that were conducted by the employees of the company.

Findings

The findings exhibit that the incident actually happened. The CEO of the company apologized for this incidence. In a statement to the press, he said that no one deserves the kind of treatment that Mrs. Smith was accorded on the fateful Sunday evening. Unfortunately for him, no sufficient amount of apology could take back the losses that were then being experienced by this organization and more so, the parent company. Not only did this situation affect the company’s’ bid of maximizing its profits but it also affect the airline industry in general (Mann 2014, p. 67). The reason for this is because the video added the potential for even harsher indignity conducted on flight passenger. This comes amidst the activities of airline organizations trying to maximize their profits from baggage fees, seat reservations among other common services included after one has paid for the plane ticket.

As a confirmation that the incidence actually happened, a statement from Mrs. Smith’s lawyers came in late Tuesday the same week that the victim was in a Chicago-area hospital. He was then receiving treatment for the injuries he suffered as a result of the brutal attack by the security guards. Numerous stakeholders are involved in the social media campaign against the company. The Chinese government for instance, has conveyed its disappointment about this matter given the consideration that Mrs. Smith appeared to be Asian. In Australia, Sunstate Airlines’ customers transmitted pictures of their torn United Loyalty or credit cards on social media.

The recommendations can be seen as the proposed solution to what Sunsete Airlines is currently going through as far as bad publicity is concerned. In a statement issued by the CEO of the airline, Oscar Munoz, the apology does not touch on the brutality suffered by the doctor under the hands of the organization’s employees. Instead, the CEO was in a way defending the company. In light of this realization, this project strongly recommends that the CEO of Sunset Airlines offers a personal apology memo to Mrs. Smith on behalf of the whole organization (Groh 2014). Doing this implies that the airline actually cares about its customers’ safety and acquisition of quality flight services as opposed to the need to maximize profits exclusively.

Another recommendation is that new rules should be deployed to curb the airline’s practice of overbooking flights. These rules will state the penalties of engaging in flight overbooking. As it may be expected, no one would want to get punished for what can clearly be avoided (Liu 2015). These rules will as such, impede Sunsete Airlines as well as other airlines in practicing such a vice. At the end, there will be reduced or zero incidences of passengers who had already booked and paid for their flights being inconvenienced by having to reschedule.  

Improving the airline’s performance with specific focus on customer relations constitutes the third recommendation for countering the problem suffered by the company and most importantly, the passengers. There are numerous ways in which this can be done. As an initial strategy, the airline’s management should probably consider laying down the security personnel who perpetrated the crime or better still, transferring them to a different department (Goldman & Scott 2016). It can be expected that the airline’s current and potential customers have already developed some kind of phobia for those guards and letting them stay will not make things any better; besides, what they did was very inhumane. Improving customer relations will, hence, reduce the chances of similar incidences occurring in future (Abreu Pederzini 2016, p. 89). Should these recommendations be implemented, the airline will stand a chance of gaining back its good reputation, and win a positive perception from its customers and the world as a whole.

Conclusion

Social media plays a vital role in the identification of the flaws that exist in offering quality services and care to organizations’ customers. This has clearly been seen in the case study involving Sunsete Airlines and a one Mrs. Smith. It is important for business organizations to implement business practices that are in the best interest of the customers served. Failure to do this might result in devastating consequences such as the ones suffered by the company. However, it cannot possibly be expected that in the process of running business organizations problems will not arise. It is thus, recommended that the organizations take swift action towards the implementation of the proposed solutions to the developed problems. This will in turn ensure that business entities remain relevant in the face of the public as portrayed by social media sites. Finally, organizations should avoid underestimate the power of the social media like the Airline’s management did.

List of References

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Mann, T. 2014, Sunstate Airlines Cuts Its Service to Atlantic City; Gov. Chris Christie Touted the Carrier’s Arrival Only Seven Months Ago, New York, N.Y.

Nicas, J. 2012, A Stingy Spirit Lifts Airline’s Profit, Eastern edition edn, New York, N.Y.

Powley, T. & Buck, T. 2017, “BA’s reputation on line as cost cuts questioned”, FT.com.

United Continental: What Customer Service Scandal? — Barron’s Blog 2017, New York.

Waldmeir, P. 2017, “Sunstate Airlines settles with abused passenger for undisclosed amount”, FT.com.