Metldown at Jet Blue
Jet Blue faced a “perfect storm” crisis that revealed a less than adequate operational system. They were faced with poor management decision-making and an insufficient IT system. These factors added to the failure and lead to a major customer service disaster.
Management elected to operate flights in bad weather conditions where other airlines were canceling flights. The problem with this is Jet Blue’s customers saw their flights were delayed rather than cancelled and traveled to the airport expecting to take their flights. As the weather worsened, so did the airlines problems. Not only did they have employees now stuck in the storm, they caused their customers to be trapped by the bad weather. Either management did not follow the weather forecast close enough, or made improper decisions about how to handle the situation. Poor communications further enhanced these problems.
The failure of the IT system was a result of short sightedness by management and IT development. This managerial decision lead to the exposure of an IT system that was not integrated very well. All the independent systems worked well for their specific tasks, but when it came to coordinating information from different operational aspects, they had no interface. The technology team at Jet Blue was put in a high pressure situation to resolve communication issues between software applications doing an excellent job in a short period of time. The system they had developed was not designed for this type of demand and the inability for customers to self-service their needs enhanced the problem.
I would have taken note of how the other airlines with more experience were handling this storm and their operations and given it more credence. A better plan would have been to cancel flights in the affected area and move aircraft and crews to locations not affected by the storm. This would have allowed the airline to continue to service cities not in the storm’s path. Minimizing the number of people impacted at one time would allow staff to resolve their situations as they came up rather than forcing it to occur simultaneously causing an overload to the system. Since the phone reservation system was gridlocked, they could have used other communication methods to reach customers. E-mails and text messages could have been used to cancel flights to reduce the number of customers arriving at the airports. This would allow them to communicate with multiple passengers at the same time and may have helped with the overloaded phone system.
The largest failure in this situation was communication. Jet Blue delayed communicating cancellations, passengers already on planes were not informed of their status, and their software incompatibilities prevented a speedy return to full service after the storm ended. While the IT systems had issues, management made decisions to run operations when it did not seem appropriate. The silver-lining to this is a more robust database system to handle future crisis situations.

References
Rainer, J. R., & Turban, E. (2008). Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.