Business Communication and Character

View Original

Southwest's Travel Advisory

Southwest Airlines is communicating clearly to customers affected by upcoming storms. In a tweet, the company linked to a simple page with further instructions.

SW travel advisory tweet

SW travel advisory

Southwest isn't wallowing in the bad news (after all, it's not the company's fault that we're getting an insane amount of snow). Rather, it's focusing on what customers can do to reschedule. On the Travel Advisory page, customers can easily see which cities are affected on which dates and how they can rebook flights.

On the website home page, however, Southwest has only a small link with red text:

SW travel advisory home page

Compare this approach to JetBlue's. On JetBlue's website, the "Winter Storm Update" is one of three, large screens on the home page:

JetBlue Winter Storm

Discussion Starters: 

  • What could account for the airlines' different approaches?
  • What works well about Southwest's Travel Advisory page? If you had travel plans during this time, what else, if anything, would you like to know?