The collision of an American Eagle jet and a Black Hawk helicopter was horrible. The only good that will come out of it is that we’ll learn enough about the incident to make the perfect storm of events that caused it much less likely to repeat.
Airlines have contingency plans for situations like this. American Airlines hasn’t experienced anything like flight 5342 in 23 years, but they update plans and train for it.
For instance, the Care Team at the airline was activated. Anyone in the company can volunteer to be a part of it – except for pilots and mechanics – and they’re on standby in the event of a disaster. They have a credit card and each person is assigned to a family member or survivor, and they stay until they aren’t needed any longer. These volunteers were contacted Wednesday night and told to go to the airport (some went to D.C., others to Wichita).
One of the elements to crisis response you might not have thought of is that American Airlines has paused marketing its credit card onboard flights.
The airline surely doesn’t want to appear tone deaf, or appearing insufficiently somber. And I guess someone somewhere could be offended by promoting travel. At the same time, it is literally people who are traveling that would hear the message so they are the least likely to be offended.
And American continues to sell tickets, and miles and Citi and Barclays continue to take card applications (and these are still promoted on the AA.com site).
Still, it’s appropriate to take a conservative approach here – there’s more downside in getting this wrong than there is upside to promoting cards on board for a short period of time. At the same time, onboard card applications help support flight attendant incomes and they aren’t being made whole for the lost opportunity.
Overall, the airline’s response to the Day After the tragic collision has been well-executed. Employees that met with CEO Robert Isom in D.C. appreciated his presence. And, unlike so many others, his remarks haven’t veered off into inappropriate speculation or blame-shifting.