American Airlines Changes Policies

American Airlines has learned from its massive public relations debacle that occured on December 29. 121 flights were stranded, some of them for up to nine hours as thunderstorms shut down Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport. One couple were so enraged they started an online petition drive to motivate Congress to pass a Passengers' Bill of Rights.

After analyzing the the incident, AA will ground flights for no more than four hours if that situation occurs again. As reported in the Austin American Statesman:

American is making changes at its systems operations control center in Fort Worth to better handle diversions and make sure officials are aware when passengers' wait times are building up.
The airline is creating a position to oversee diversions and help schedule flights to get passengers back to their connecting hubs.
It is developing automation tools to warn managers when passengers have been on the ground a long time.
The carrier said it also was "reviewing all procedures related to customer handling and make appropriate changes as needed."

Stranded passengers had criticized the airline for how it handled passengers after the flight cancellations, with inadequate staffing at airports, poor communications about what was going to happen next and not enough help while they were waiting.

American Airlines has taken a lot of heat for the mishandling of the episode, most of it justified. But they took a hard look at what happened and have changed policies and spent money to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Does you organization have the same ability to learn from its mistakes, or do they just get ignored?

Regards,

Glenn

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