A Case Study Analysis of

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of

M.M.S (Master of Management Studies)

By

Mayur Bangar 08Pooja Ghode 31

Kishor Gimekar 33Sumedh Ingole 38Vrundan Shah 50

Under the guidance of:

Dr. Baldev Raj

[Type text]

MET’s Institute of Management, Bandra

Batch of 2010-2012

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Case titled “Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm” is based on the study conducted by:

Mayur Bangar 08

Pooja Ghode 31

Kishor Gimekar 33

Sumedh Ingole 38

Vrundan Shah 50

Under my guidance and this had not formed a basis the award of any other degree of this Institute.

Place : Mumbai

Date : Faculty’s Sign

Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Although five authors worked on this document, it would not have been

written without support from various sources.

A work is never a work of an individual. We owe a sense of gratitude to the

intelligence and co-operation of those people who have been so easy to let us

understand what we needed from time to time for completion of this project.

We want to express our gratitude towards Dr. Baldev Raj, Services

management Faculty, MET Institute of Management for giving us an opportunity

to analyse this case and his patient help and guidance in the finishing stages of

this work. We are highly grateful to Director Prof. Vijay Page and Course Co-

ordinator Prof. Sangeeta Tandon for all the facilities they have provided us with.

We would also to thank our families for their encouragement and support.

We would also like to forward our gratitude to our friends & other faculty

members who always endured us and stood by us.

Last but not the least; we would like to thank each other as a team for

being hard-working and sincere in our efforts towards the completion of this

project.

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QUESTIONS

1. What exactly went wrong? How bad was this situation? How much of what

went wrong was inconvenience, how much was safety, how much was

hygiene – and how bad was each?

2. Could this situation have been avoided? If not, could it have been mitigated

(and if so, how)?

3. Suggest appropriate procedures to avoid such unpleasant service

encounter in future

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Q 1) What exactly went wrong? How bad was this situation? How much of what

went wrong was inconvenience, how much was safety, how much was hygiene

and how bad was each?

Answer:

What exactly went wrong:

Various factors responsible are:

1. Weather Warnings

2. Ground staff not prepared for ground delays

3. Lack of communication

4. Role conflict

5. Misjudgment of safety

Weather warnings:

Despite weather warnings, northwest took decision to fly whereas every

other airlines discontinued their services. Just to impress customers only

northwest airlines didn’t continue their services led them to crises.

Ground staff not prepared for ground delays:

Due to snowstorm less ground staff was available and snow removing

machines were not working. This two factors led to delays and ground staff

was not exposed to such kind of delays.

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Lack of communication:

There was no proper communication between Northwest Business Unit,

DWA staff, Passengers and Other Competitor Airlines. Had the situation

crises had been made available to Top Official there might have been

immediate steps taken and the situation would not be worst.

Misjudgment of safety:

NWA meteorologist issued a less severe weather forecast for DTW.

SOC Director should have taken the advice of NWA’s Chief Dispatcher

regarding shutdown of Detroit operations instead of reducing number of

flights per bank.

How bad was this situation?

The main reason for the worth situation was failure in the following area.

1. People

2. Policy

3. Process

4. Quality of service

People:

After the landing due to snowstorm, initially they were made to wait for 2

hrs as other Northwest jets were tying up the gates. Pilot tried to calm

down the passengers by showing movies, inviting passengers to drop in for

cockpit tour, allowing the usage of cell phone. Still there was discomfort

among passengers As the waiting time was increasing, food and water

Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm 6

almost running out. People were feeling like they were in prison. Once such

incidence where Sharon Friedman told that’s it hurt to deprive one child

over the other as she had only 1 bottle of water remaining.

After almost 6 hrs. people were getting impatient and rude and various

rumors were mounting among the passengers, which led aggression and

impatience among the passengers.

Policy:

Due to strict Laws and Policies Cellphones, Alcohol consumption and

Smoking were not allowed. But the pilot allowed the passengers to use

cellphones, alcohol and smoking to keep them calm as the waiting time was

increasing. You can imagine how bad was the situation since, Pilot allowed

all the things which were strictly banned.

Process:

There was no

1. Proper communication

2. No emergency Plan

3. No safety assessment

Proper communication:

There was no proper communication between Northwest Business Unit,

DWA staff , Passengers and Other Competitor Airlines..Had the situation

crises had been made available to Top official there might have been

immediate steps taken and the situation would not be worst.

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Emergency Plan:

North West Airlines had no snow emergency plan had it been the reverse

case Passengers would not have face the imprison like situation.

Safety Assessment:

There was no proper system install to take care of the safety of passengers

in terms of emergency crises so the Cabin Crew was unable to handle the

safety assessment to passengers in the snowfall crises of the Airlnes.

Quality Of Service

When the passengers were allowed to stay in the hotel there were no

proper assistance from the Cabin Crew.

Also Airlines failed to carry good enough Food and other necessary items.

All these led to stock out of food and drink in the crises situation.

How much of what went wrong was

A) Inconvenience?

The lack of proper process which caused poor communication and wrong

decisions created a lot of inconvenience to passengers. The inconvenience

caused to passengers were

After landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the planes had to sit on

the tarmac for as long as eight hours because other Northwest jets

were tying up the gates.

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The situation was so bad that one group of passengers filed a lawsuit in

Wayne County , Mich, Circuit Court against the county, the Detroit airport

and Northwest , alleging that thousands of passengers were “ imprisoned”

on the carrier’s planes during the storm and not allowed to disembark for

hours.

The lack of contingency plan by Northwest resulted into passengers

waiting for hours without food and water.

The plane had a capacity of 60 gallons of potable water, however the entire

potable water ran out resulting into no water left with passengers for

drinking as well as use in the lavatory sinks.

When the flight took off from Tampa airport, considering that the travel

time was just 2 hours to Detroit, they allowed extra passengers and also

removed 2 extra beverage carts and big bags of peanut packets. As a result

the passengers were not left with any food at the time of emergency.

When the plane was routed to Tampa airport due to weather

problems at Detroit, the passengers had to go through a lot of

inconvenience, since the plane had landed late at night, check in took

a long time, the buffet served to them at hotel was also bad, due to

lack of communication about the exact take off time from Tampa,

many passengers gathered at the airport very early in the morning.

There was one passenger Mr. Post lay down on the airport floor and

slept for 4 hours.

Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm 9

Many people started smoking, and the flight attendant didn’t bother

to stop them, the cigarettes smell inconvenienced the passengers

and the smoke caused the fire alarm to beep continuously

As the wait extended, passengers started becoming aggressive,

impatient and rude.

One of the passenger Mr. Pettis was trying to read Toni Morrison’s Beloved

but could not concentrate. Babies were crying. The children behind him

kept kicking his seat, and when he asked their mother to make them stop,

she flared up. “If you move your seat up, it will stop,” she snapped.

The entire plane started stinking after few hours, the reason for this was that

the toilets started overflowing, used diapers were used for babies, the clothes

of the passengers had become dirty and sweaty. As the toilet was overflowed,

the passengers sitting near to the toilets were inconvenienced by the bad

smell.

B) Safety?

The poor decision to allow the plane to take off was like ignoring the safety of

passengers.

Even though the weather was bad at Detroit, the Head quarters of

Northwest allowed the flight to take off, compromising the safety of

passengers.

The attitude of the pilots was also not towards the safety of passengers, as

they felt nothing unusual in flying the plane in bad weather.

It is very dangerous to smoke inside a plane, however many passengers started

smoking in the plane. This was not objected by any of the crew members.

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Smoking is not only dangerous for the children inside the plane but also it may

result into plane catching fire.

As mentioned earlier regarding the removal of extra food from the plane, not

only caused inconvenience but also raised safety concerns as there were small

babies inside the plane.

There were rumours about a baby been born on one plane; a man had died of

a heart attack and on another plane, passengers had gone berserk and were

tearing each other and the crew apart. All these created a panic situation

among the passengers.

A man in first class began hyperventilating

There were at least 2 persons who required emergency treatment for

diabetic shock and cardiac arrest symptoms

There was a situation where if somebody had done a panic evacuation, there

would have been serious commotion among the passengers. Also if the doors

were opened the temperature inside the plane would have been equalized

with that of outside temperature causing serious safety hazards to

passengers ,especially children as the temperature outside the plane was

below 20o Celsius

There were more safety concerns for babies as people were out of baby

formula.

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C) Hygiene?

The holding tanks for the plane’s four toilets had a total capacity

of 55.5 gallons; the entire capacity was filled, resulting into toilets

been overflowed.

The sewage had started coming out from the door of the toilet.

People were out of baby diapers; as a result they started using

used diapers causing unhygienic conditions for children and other

passengers.

There were empty beer cans in the sink and the trash bins were

stuffed with diapers

Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm 12

Q 2) Could this situation have been avoided? If not, could it have been mitigated

(and if so, how)?

Answer :

The Situation could have been avoided had Northwest Management and Crew

took responsibility of the entire situation and proceeded with precautionary

measures.

Some of the measures that they could have taken to avoid such an event are as

follows:

1) Bad Decision by Management:

The management ordered removal of two extra beverage carts and big bags of

peanut packets removed from the plane which was unnecessary as they should

have accounted for delay that might arise as there was a storm at Detroit which

could have and eventually caused delay in deplaning passengers.

Management failed to anticipate the severity of the flight crew shortage at

Detroit on Sunday; the shortage was due to various reasons such as difficulties

getting to airport terminal.

Failure of Systems Operation Control (SOC), An SOC director ensures SOC group

acts as a coordinated team. They are responsible for monitoring and coordinating

NWA’s response to schedule problems and any other potential problems. NWA’s

chief dispatcher warned SOC director that the conditions were bad enough to

justify NWA’s shutdown however considering that conditions were still above

legal minimums the director decided to continue its Detroit operations by

reducing the number of arrivals to 25 from 39 per bank.

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NWA’s meteorologists issued a less severe weather forecast for DTW on Friday

night, but NWA did not change its flight-thinning plan

2) Communication:

A lack of clear and coordinated communications between Northwest’s operation

planners in Minneapolis and northwest management in Detroit prevented the

operations planners from realizing that Northwest’s Detroit terminal could not

accommodate even the limited number of arrivals scheduled for Sunday.

The employees were so busy fire fighting that they failed to let authorities know

the overall severity and implications of the problems they faced throughout the

day.

How the situation could have been mitigated

Even after the crisis happened there were some measures the NWA could have

undertaken to lessen the impact or to mitigate the crisis. Some of the measures

are discussed in the following.

1) Seeking help from other airlines:

Attempts to secure unused gates of other airlines were not well coordinated,

although Continental provided an unused gate to them.

They could have deplaned there passengers by using mobile passenger stairs

similar to what Spirit airlines did, which had similar planes as that of NWA. Even if

they didn’t have a useable stairs they could have borrowed it from other airlines

and deplaned there passengers.

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2) Emergency Plan

Northwest efforts to deplane passengers were hindered by the lack of a

contingency plan for the storm’s effect on gates and taxiways.

Had Northwest had a snow emergency plan for Detroit then the planners would

have received more accurate assessment of that progress and would likely have

implemented a more conservative Sunday arrival schedule.

Northwest and the Wayne county department of Airports could have improved

snow removal and aircraft positioning efforts, and thus mitigate ground delays,

through formal communication channel

3) Employee Management:

Similar to what Wayne County Department of Airports and other airlines serving

DTW did, NWA should have booked hotels near to Airport so as to save on

difficult trips to and from the airport.

The employees who did manage to reach airport were not qualified to operate

the types of aircraft that were scheduled to depart.

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Q 3) Suggest appropriate procedures to avoid such unpleasant service

encounter in future.

Procedures to avoid such unpleasant service encounter in the future are1) Recruitment, Talent Development and empowering employees 2) Establishing guidelines and standards 3) Quick, Easy, Efficient Access and Responses 4) C&C Database Maintenance

1) Recruitment, Talent Development and empowering employees:

Recruitment:Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting a qualified person for a job. Retain professional recruiters or outsourcing the process to recruitment agencies.Recruitment for employees with right skills set, right attitude and right match to the teams already working.

Talent Development:Training will have specific goals of improving employees' capability, capacity, and performance. It will form the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at airline.Need to continue training beyond initial qualifications is to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life.

Empowering employees:Empowerment refers to increasing the strength of employees in decision making.

Empowerment includes the following, or similar, capabilities:-

The ability to make decisions about personal/collective circumstances

The ability to access information and resources for decision-making

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Ability to consider a range of options from which to choose (not just

yes/no, either/or.)

Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making

Increasing one's ability in discreet thinking to sort out right and wrong

The three keys that managers must use to empower their employees are:

1. share information with everyone

2. create autonomy through boundaries

3. replace the old hierarchy with self-managed teams

2) Establishing guidelines and standards To improve procedures and performance of customer service

The ‘AAAA’ action plan could be used as a standard guideline as to what

action the airline takes in the case of a service failure.

• AAAA’ Action Plan for Service Recovery:

– Anticipate – be prepared for backlash, staff ready to deal with crisis

– Acknowledge – full responsibility, at time of crisis, reduces conflict

– Apologize – regardless of who is at fault, must be sincere

– Amends – take action, compensate appropriately

Benefits of AAAA Action Plan

• Management and staff would be aware of the emergency procedure

• Prepared for the unexpected - remain calm and professional

• Company performance will be improved through customer satisfaction

• Organised and professional approach – no loss of customers

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Management and staff would be aware of the emergency procedure - would help

deal with potential conflict that can arise from unexpected crises

Shows to their customers that during a crisis they have remained calm and

professional and most importantly were prepared for the unexpected

Achieving fairness and customer satisfaction represents a direct approach to

improving company performance

Management will be looked on very favourably either during or after the crisis by

the customers because of their organised and professional approach – no loss of

customers

3) Quick, Easy, Efficient Access and Responses

Easy, Efficient Access is required for the customers to generate faith again in the airline. Access to the airports and other resources is very integral part of the airline transportation. It can be done well by prioritizing and sequencing the operations.Quick responses will be able to make the decision process faster and thus making employees as well as the customer aware of the facts going on. Thus bringing transparency in the process.

4) C&C Database Maintenance

Customer & Channel database maintenance is used to keep track of their customer information and survey their customer base in order to obtain feedback. Surveys and data can be centrally located and widely accessible within a company, as opposed to being warehoused in separate departments.It encompasses collection, analysis, organizing, reporting and sharing of customer information throughout an organization. Businesses need a thorough

Northwest Airlines And Detroit Snowstorm 18

understanding of their customers’ needs if they are to retain and increase their customer base.Solutions will provide with the ability to deal instantly with customer issues and obtain immediate feedback.As a result, customer retention and customer satisfaction can show dramatic improvement.

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