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2013 COLUMNS

CHRIS ARCHIVES

MANAGING A CRISIS 2,200 MILES AWAY
By Chris Barnett
July 10, 2013 -- I'm highballing east in the Badger Bus on Highway 94 from Madison to Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport on a rainy Monday morning. It's my second try to fly home to San Francisco. My first was last Saturday, when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash landed at SFO.

I checked in at the curb last Saturday for Southwest Airlines Flight 3511, a nonstop to SFO departing at 4:56 pm Central Time with a scheduled arrival at 7:30 pm Pacific Time. It's usually an easy trip and I had a high boarding number that assured me an aisle seat.

Smug that I had bypassed Southwest's check-in lines inside the terminal, I was heading for my gate on Concourse C. But out of the corner of my eye, I got a glimpse of a plane on a television monitor with most of the right front fuselage torn open. A closer look revealed that the aircraft sprawled on its belly was an Asiana Airlines 777-200ER.

For all of the sympathy we feel for fellow travelers in an airline tragedy, the truth is that our thoughts pretty quickly turn to our own schedules when we're in transit and trying to get to the airport where the incident occurred. No matter what, I needed to get home to San Francisco.

Southwest has dozens of flights in and out of Milwaukee and its long ticket counter was staffed with plenty of agents. At one end, a supervisor was being peppered with questions. She was neither evasive nor promising.

"All we know at this point is that San Francisco Airport is closed and Flight 3511 is delayed indefinitely," she said.

A half-dozen passengers were looking for answers or at least hints on whether the SFO nonstop was going to cancel. If it was going to dump, they naturally wanted to find alternate flights to another Bay Area airport. The Southwest counter agent wasn't encouraging or discouraging, nor was she annoyed as the crowd of worried travelers started to swell.

"I cannot tell you now if our San Francisco flight will just be delayed, diverted or cancelled," she said with a pained smile. "I can tell you this: Summerfest [the huge outdoor music festival in Milwaukee] ends tomorrow and all our flights to the West Coast are sold out for the next three days."

I headed for the gate, quickly cleared security, and found five Southwest gate agents handling questions from a surprisingly calm, albeit confused, group of travelers. Here, too, the gate agents tried to be helpful, even though the information was scant. SFO was still closed and the reports broadcast on the TV monitors were blaring that SFO could remain shut down for days.

After years of writing about business travel, I knew the snarl the Asiana crash was creating for flight schedules around the country. But I was anxious to get home because I was attending a memorial service for a longtime friend on Sunday.

One agent found a few available seats on a connecting Southwest flight to Oakland on Monday that entailed a two-hour layover in Seattle. Even though it was way out of my way, it was a way out of Milwaukee and I took it. I simply didn't want to risk waiting around the airport and have the delayed flight to SFO eventually cancel. The agent reticketed me, tracked down my checked bag and had it on the carousel within 15 minutes.

Days later, all eyes are still focused on Asiana, the cause of the crash and details of the disaster. We're grateful that all but two of the 307 passengers and crew escaped with their lives. As Jerry Chandler writes this week, the incident reminds us all about the precautions we should take to survive a crash. And as Joe Brancatelli writes, Asiana Flight 214 reminds us of the fine line between life and death on the road.

But for business flyers on other airlines disrupted by the ripple effects of a disaster, Southwest Airlines' responsive handling in Milwaukee of a crisis 2,200 miles away was a textbook lesson for other carriers. The secret of good customer service? Have plenty of staff on hand who do not buckle under the pressure and uncertainty. Plus, don't clam up or speculate. Just tell us the facts you know and give us our options.

Postscript: San Francisco International reopened two runways later on Saturday. Southwest's SFO nonstop did take off, although it departed three hours late and without me. I missed my friend's memorial service. And the Southwest flight on Monday to Seattle departed on-time at 11:40 a.m. Every seat was filled.

ABOUT CHRIS BARNETT Chris Barnett writes about business-travel tactics and strategies that save time and money and help minimize hassles. He is based in San Francisco and has written for a wide variety of major newspapers and national magazines.

THE FINE PRINT Joe Brancatelli makes this space available to Chris Barnett in the spirit of free speech and to help encourage editorial diversity and the wider discussion of important travel issues. All of the opinions and material in this column are the sole property of Barnett. This material may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of Chris Barnett.

This column is Copyright © 2013 by Chris Barnett. JoeSentMe is Copyright © 2013 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved.