How the United Airlines brand is managing air traffic turbulence

This past weekend, there were more disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport due to Federal Aviation Administration equipment outages. It has added to the air travel chaos at Newark over the past month, which has included air traffic controllers losing communication with planes for up to 90 seconds, and led to the delay and cancellation of hundreds of flights. 

On Monday morning, there were at least 59 flight delays and more than 80 cancellations at Newark, according to FlightAware data.

Air traffic controllers and the 79,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, are calling on the FAA to update its aging infrastructure to ensure the system is as safe and efficient as possible. At least five Newark air traffic controllers have taken 45 days of trauma leave after the radar and radio communication loss during the busy afternoon of April 28.

Caught in the middle of the issues at Newark is United Airlines, which is the most active airline at the New Jersey airport. While the problems lie with the FAA system, the airline is where people often aim their frustrations over cancellations and delays. 

This presents United with a unique brand challenge. The brand must find solutions and communicate clearly with its customers about a problem that it’s ultimately not responsible for, or in control of. 

United was forced to cancel at least 35 flights per day last week (as of Friday). Josh Earnest, United’s executive vice president of communications and advertising, says that while people understand that United Airlines is not responsible for running the air traffic control tower, the brand still has to act. 

“People know it’s not our equipment or employees managing the airspace, but our brand is so big, and our presence at Newark in particular is so large, that they expect us to do something about it,” Earnest says.  

Transparency is key

For Earnest, the key to navigating a situation like this is for the brand to be as transparent and clear as it possibly can. United has a responsibility to ensure and assure its customers that not only are its flights safe, but that the cancellations are directly related to that safety. 

“We don’t usually aggressively promote the fact that we had to cancel a bunch of fights,” Earnest says. “But in this case, we did because people expect us to do something about the problem. And by taking 35 fights out of the schedule [each day], that makes it much more likely that the other 293 fights, or whatever it is, will operate on time. The airport’s less crowded, there’s less congestion. That’s us taking proactive steps to try to solve that problem.”

The next step is communicating this to customers. So far, United has been utilizing social media and earned media to do that. The Newark outage story has been getting such a bright media spotlight that the brand has used it to get its own message out. United CEO Scott Kirby appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation this past weekend to talk about the issues. And Kirby’s original May 2 memo about Newark flight cancellations appeared in The Wall Street Journal just an hour after it was sent.  

Safety first

Canceling flights would initially qualify as kryptonite to any airline brand. But Earnest says that while it may cause some short-term pain, it’s an investment in the brand’s long-term health. 

“The most important issue that people should associate with our brand is safety. The operational environment is messy, but the reason that it’s messy is that we’re keeping it safe,” he adds. “So when there’s a lack of staffing in the control tower or some other issue, the right thing to do is to slow down the operation at the airport, with more separation between the planes. That’s something that we’re going to need to continue to reinforce, and we’re going to spend our credibility to do it. The good news is that’s not a tough decision to make because it’s actually our first and highest priority.”

The situation in Newark hasn’t slowed down United’s marketing operation. This week, the airline unveiled and prompted its first flights featuring Starlink Wi-Fi. 

Earnest says that in times like this, the brand is provided an opportunity to really shine. “If we handle it well, we will earn credibility with our customers in those moments,” he says. “As challenging as this is, it is an opportunity for us to actually earn even more of our customers’ confidence.”

View the full article