Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Author:Clay Shirky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-07T20:00:00+00:00

Angry Passengers, Faster Action

On January 3, 1999, Northwest Airlines flight 1829 took off from Miami on its way to Detroit. Flight 1829 ordinarily flies from the Caribbean vacation spot of St. Martin, but the day before, because of a snowstorm in Detroit, it had been diverted to Miami. The flight left Miami a little after noon and landed in Detroit at 2:45 p.m. The passengers’ trip that day was less than a third over.

Though the snow had stopped falling, the Detroit airport had been unprepared for the storm. The additional flights from the previous day’s closure, the snow still to be cleared, and insufficient staff all meant that not enough gates were open. After Flight 1829 landed, the pilot was directed to pull over to a side runway, and the passengers were told to expect a two-hour delay, which had the predictable effect on their mood. Two hours came and went with no gate clearance; the flight attendants struggled to keep the passengers mollified with limited supplies. They had not stocked up on food or drinks in Miami (it was to have been a short flight) and were running out of liquor as passengers continued drinking to dull their annoyance. Three hours passed, then four. The lavatories began to smell, then clog, then leak. Lawyers on board were signing up potential plaintiffs. Passengers with babies, heart conditions, and nicotine habits all pleaded with the flight crew to get them off the plane. These pleas were forwarded to the flight deck, who in turn called the ground crew, who offered little more than assurances that they knew things were bad and were working on it.

Five hours passed. Flight attendants began encouraging passengers to write letters of complaint to the CEO. Someone suggested calling him instead. They found his name, John Dasburg, in the in-flight magazine, and his home phone number via directory assistance. They called his house. He wasn’t home, but his wife answered and got an earful from the passengers. The captain, learning that a passenger had called Dasburg, summoned the caller to the cockpit and asked for the number. The captain himself then called Dasburg to demand that a gate be opened.That—finally—got results. The plane pulled out of the line (to the understandable frustration of the other waiting pilots) and headed to the newly opened gate. At 9:42 p.m., the passengers finally disembarked, seven hours after they’d landed.

This tale resulted in incredibly bad press for Northwest and for the airline industry generally. The net result, though, was negligible. If any letters of complaint were delivered to Dasburg, they produced no apparent change. The lawsuit, for “false imprisonment and breach of contract,” was settled out of court, and the airlines adopted a toothless and voluntary Customer Service Initiative (which should have been redundant, given the business they are in). People had been subjected to quite incredible torment from a company nominally in the business of providing a service, but in the end the power in that particular situation lay with the airline, not with its customers.

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