Tale of Two Airlines in the Network Age

This appears to be a case where wit was very shy on the scholar’s end. Professor Roger McPherson’s assumed that the information systems at the London based airport were far better than what they actually were. It appears that he was making a pure assumption that each and every time he would fly first class, that all of his worries would be lost because of the reliability and experience he has had in the past with the very same airlines. I do believe that his assumptions were realistic for this time period only because back then the power of the internet would have not prevented the Professor from boarding the plane because most airlines in this day and age, check and see digitally if all passengers have boarded the plane before taking off. Thus his investment would have paid off as he anticipated.
The reality of this situation is that in the game of connection flights, one should never schedule a flight so close together from transfer times. In this situation assuming that the flights are going to land on time and not taking into consideration that the weather or an issue with the plane can delay the time can seriously hurt your chances of making a meeting the very next day in a country across the Atlantic. Given that the year was 1995 and portable technology is almost non-existent (except for the function of making a phone call) he could not receive a text message or email stating what procedures to follow, he purely used his instinct to get to the next terminal. One should always take into consideration that even if they purchase tickets for first class, they are not guaranteed that the flight will arrive on time. Also that if they are going to make a flight to reach a country that is thousands of miles away they should schedule the flight to land a day or two in advance so that if a situation such as this one were to occur, they will not be as stressed and their money and time will not go to waste. If there is no other choice and the flight needs to be the exact day of, schedule the flight to have at least 3 hours until you would need to take the connection flight.
The Atlanta based Airline took the time and consideration to assure the Professor that he would arrive at his destination with ease. This is very important for the high end clients to return and pay the rate they are saying in order to feel at ease when flying. They did a great job considering the circumstance and they did exactly what the London Airlines couldn’t do, that was have the staff available at all times no matter if the plane was about to take off, and relieve the strain of the passenger by making them feel comfortable after experiencing such a great ordeal of stress. The advice I would give the London based airlines is to never leaving anyone behind especially a first class passenger. I would page the airport to see why the passenger is missing and delay the flight by 5 min just to make sure everyone is on board for such a long flight. Also if they plane was delayed they should have had a shuttle ready for the passengers who were on connecting flights so that they wouldn’t have had any angry returning customers. This is all due in part to a lack of preparedness for emergency situations such as this one which resulted in an angry customer who will probably never return as a customer to this airline’s again.
This is a primary example of how bad ideas can get worse with the sheer coincidence that the outlying factors that can affect a situation. If he had hired a travel agent or gotten advice from a colleague about scheduling flights, this could have prevented him from missing the meeting in London. In conclusion this is how Information technology (which was simply not up to par to what he was expecting), operations strategy (which the British Airlines poorly executed), management control (which was done at a great measure by the Atlanta Airlines), an empowered (also unempowered) work force, and service management all took place to unravel this case study for Roger McPherson’s.