Jet Blues

The best thing about commenting on companies' public relations work in response to a crisis is that we have the benefit of hindsight. Having been in PR for more years than I care to remember, I know how easy it is to point a finger and say "you shoulda done this."

By all accounts, however, Jet Blue's handling of the recent of the passenger hostage situation has been a disaster-up until now. Today, you can't turn on the TV without seeing CEO David Neeleman on the air doing what he should have done from the beginning-issuing mea culpas and telling passengers what they are going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. It might be too little, too late, but they seem to be on the right track.

I compare Jet Blue's response with the other Fox-fodder of the past few weeks-namely the tale of diaper wearing murderous astronaut. NASA has a history of atrocious PR. However, I have to give them props for this one. Yeah, it does tarnish the whole "astronaut as superhero" mystique, but by most accounts, it hasn't really done as much damage to the space program that it could have. People seem to understand that this was the work of one whack job. What NASA did right was (fairly) quickly issue a statement of sympathy and followed that up with announced program reviews to better spot the psychos in the astronaut corp. (The one thing that was missing IMHO, was mandatory once a month counseling by non-NASA therapists to prevent this from happening in the first place.)