(Case Analysis: Northwest Airlines and the Detroit Snowstorm
1. What exactly went wrong? How bad was this situation? Ans: There was a snowstorm on Saturday, January 2nd, which was very serious and caused over 10 inches of snowfall. Northwest Airlines had been too late to halt the departure of their planes from other cities to Detroit, on of its largest hub. They made the decision to let 30 planes land in Detroit on Sunday, neglecting those 14 inches of snow and the severe weather condition. Luckily, all the planes were landed successfully without any major accidents or disasters. However, the planes had to sit on the tarmac for over 8 hours before they could deplane their passengers. All the food, water and drinks were used up
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Other airlines had claimed that they had not received any call from Northwest Airlines regarding the situation nor asking any help from them. Also, the situation could be mitigated if Northwest Airlines had integrated stairs on their planes. Spirit Airlines had in fact safely deplane their passengers using the integrated stairs. The passengers were then immediately taken into waiting rental car company buses to the terminal. The Northwest Airlines could borrow the appropriate mobile passenger stairs from another airline to mitigate the situation, but they had not considered to do so. 3. Who is responsible and why? Was the cause of this situation an “act of God” (the weather) or some organization? If an organization was responsible, which was it? Ans: The Systems Operations Control (“SOC”) group had to be responsible for this situation. They are the one responsible for monitoring and coordinating Northwest Airline’s response to schedule problems and any other potential problems. On Saturday, January 2nd, Northwest Airline’s Chief Dispatcher had already suggested that the conditions were bad enough to justify a shutdown of NWA’s operations. However, the director of the SOC department insisted to carry on the departures due to given that conditions were still above legal minimums. He was the one to decide the NWA’s operations at Detroit should continue, although he did reduce the number of arrivals from 39 to 25 per
Air Canada has been in the business of air transport for an extended period of time. Due to the experience and the exposure of the carrier in the field, it has made a commendable progress through many strategies as well as customer proximity. One of the approaches taken by the airline involves the identification as well as an implementation of cost reduction initiatives in a bid to increase revenue from its operations (Air Canada, 2016). It is also attempting to connect with the existing carriers across the world to connect the current customers to the international world. This approach has been adopted to increase its competitive advantage over other existing airlines.
r market by entering into strategic code-sharing agreements with international carriers, such as Cathay Pacific , and American Airlines
and 148 of the total 149 passengers. The crash also killed 2 people on the ground when they
Airline travel is arguably safer than that of car travel, with not only less risk for in motion issues and collisions of any sort, but not issues about missing the turn off. Airline travel issues do not usually persist during travel, yet can sometimes happen before the take-off even begins. The issue with Airline travel is not travel hazards, but instead travel protocols often carried out by the airline companies. United Airlines specifically has gone through too many CEO switches and un-transparent business ethics leading to customer complaints and needs to reevaluate business ethics.
On January 12, 1888, the weather in the west was mild, compared to previous weeks. Little did the people know that a massive cold front was in route and would be catastrophic to the people, their livestock, and the economy in the dekota and nebraska praries. The cold front would cause one of the worst blizzards for the region, killing close to 500 people. The factors that made the death toll so high involve the mild weather before the storm, the lack of technology for warning systems, and bad timing.
Globalization can be defined as “making worldwide in scope or application”(1). In this comparison of the global corporate culture of Northwest Airlines and American Airlines several areas will be addressed. The strength of the global culture with-in the companies. The fit of the company to the global marketplace, and the adaptive ness or the empowerment of the employees will be examined and compared. Perhaps more important, than whether they currently have a global atmosphere, is whether they can improve or create this atmosphere. A comparison between the two airlines will be made on their mission statements, information dissemination, global-mindedness,
At the onset of the airline industry in the United States, major network airlines were the sole providers of air travel. This multifaceted industry was a difficult industry to break into as a consequence of “sophisticated customer segmentation, hub-and spoke models and costly information systems for reservations, fare wars and intense competition” (Thompson 2008). Shrinkage in airline ticket prices augmented the demand for airline travel. Many markets were simply deserted or over-looked by major network airlines; this is a region a fresh “second tier of service providers” could enter into. This endeavor proved to provide a consumer savings of billions per year. Thus in June of 1971, after a tumultuous battle with other Texas-based
Piedmont Airlines recently invested over $1 million in state of the art equipment and employee development in order to forecast and analyze the appropriate amount of discounted fares to offer per flight. The company discovered that by offering several discounted flights to consumers willing to book their travel well in advance of their departure date left many options available for the business traveler who needed to book much closer to the actual departure date. The analysis was the task of the Revenue Enhancement Department (RED) managed by Marilyn Hoppe. While this state of the art equipment was a step in the right direction, Marilyn believed that there were still a lot of subjective decisions being made and
In 1888 on a Thursday afternoon 235 people were killed by a blizzard on their way home from school. Taking place in the Northwest Plains region of the United States the blizzard came without a warning temperature went down 100 degrees in a 24 hour. On a Thursday afternoon, a day before the storm it was unusually warm from Montana east to the Dakotas and south to Texas. Then suddenly within a couple hours the Arctic air that came from Canada went South. In North Dakota temperatures went forty degrees below zero. High winds and heavy snow came with the storm which caused terrible conditions. In rural areas adults working on farms and children coming home from school were the ones who were mostly affected by the blizzard. A schoolteacher in Pawnee
JetBlue Airways, the latest entrant in the airlines industry has gone through the initial stages (entrepreneurial and collectivity) of the organizational life cycle rapidly under the successful leadership of David Neelman. JetBlue Airways is currently in the formalization stage of the life cycle where in it needs to create procedures and control systems to effectively manage its growth. Also as it proceeds to grow further to reach the elaboration stage, JetBlue needs to continue to align itself with the environment in order to maintain its sustained growth.
1. United Airlines is owned by the UAL Corporation and was incorporated on December 30, 1968. The actual company was formed may years before this actually in 1925 and was a private mail carrying service between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, and from these humble beginnings they formed a were able to start a company that would come to be a global leader in the airline service. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s the company had 6 different presidents and started to expand and venture into different aspects of business other then airlines and were unable to have any success. These companies that they purchased were not a success and were later resold.
Scandinavian Airlines serves 32 million people and is the largest airline in Scandinavia. It has been a first-mover in many areas and has built a positive reputation for corporate responsibility. Having decided to update its fleet with 55 Boeing 737s, SAS now has to decide whether to purchase DAC green engines.
JetBlue Airways, the latest entrant in the airlines industry has gone through the initial stages (entrepreneurial and collectivity) of the organizational life cycle rapidly under the successful leadership of David Neelman. JetBlue Airways is currently in the formalization stage of the life cycle where in it needs to create procedures and control systems to effectively manage its growth. Also as it proceeds to grow further to reach the elaboration stage, JetBlue needs to continue to align itself with the environment in order to maintain its sustained growth.
Danville Airlines has created an ethical and legal dilemma by not being accurate, precise and clear on how they are doing medical testing, causing undue stress and potentially career-ending circumstances for David Reiger, one of their best pilots. What Danville did was illegal and unethical due to negligence. David Reiger has every right to sue them to continue flying, and the medical evidence suggests that the Huntington's disease gene can be dormant for decades before being active and changing a person's nervous system (Darden, 2004). The company has violated the 1974 Privacy Act, the Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. As is best practice with the nascent, emerging field of genetic testing, Danville did not warn Reiger of the testing taking place, did not get his permission, and didn't even have a process in place for dealing with pilots, whom the traveling public relies on for safe transport, when they are tested positive for these types of diseases (Murry, Wimbush, Dalton, 2001). Clearly Reiger would win any lawsuit, the collateral damage to Danville being the lack of oversight and gross negligence in managing health screening.
Given the time and weather, the airline crew would have been under lot of stress and might be very eager to move on to their next task and also we need to consider operational expenses of a foreign airline. There are multiple issues here: