Tarmac Delay Case Study: Service Failure and Recovery Strategies

This case study delves into a significant tarmac delay incident involving Delta Airlines at Kansas City International Airport, caused by a severe ice storm. It identifies the apparent causes, including weather conditions and crew duty limitations, highlighting potential preventative measures and management inefficiencies. The study analyzes customer responses through the lens of cultural differences in service recovery expectations, focusing on explanation preferences and tangible compensation. Furthermore, it examines fairness themes, such as outcome and procedural fairness, in the context of the airline's response. The remedies applied by the airline, or lack thereof, are identified and evaluated, including explanations and assurances. The case study emphasizes the critical need for internal coordination and communication within the airline to effectively respond to and recover from such delays, ultimately concluding that the airline's recovery plan was insufficient for maintaining customer relationships. Desklib provides access to similar case studies and solved assignments for students.

Tarmac Delay
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
1.0 Identify a severe example of a major reported tarmac delay...............................................2
2.0 Identify the apparent cause of the delay and discuss what may have been done to prevent
it..................................................................................................................................................2
3.0 Describe the responses from the customers involved using the categories from the Global
Feature: Service Recovery across Cultures (see attached picture).............................................3
4.0 Identify and briefly describe "fairness themes" that may apply in this case........................3
5.0 Identify remedies applied by the airline...............................................................................4
6.0 Describe what internal coordination and communication must occur within the airline in
order to respond and recover from such delays.........................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
Reference List............................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
This assignment is going to discuss about Tarmac delay which is an inefficiency of the
airlines service. A severe tarmac delay that took place in the recent past is to be investigated
and service recovery in different cultures is to be clarified and the remedies are to be
clarified.
1.0 Identify a severe example of a major reported tarmac delay
One of the worst situations of tarmac delay that took place in the recent past is of Delta
Airlines, where the passengers were made to spend 12 hours in a trapped condition inside the
airplane in Kansas City International Airport because of icy situation. The frustration and ire
of the passengers has been mounting as the time of the tarmac delay was increasing in a never
ending manner. The passenger boarded the plane on 6.30 a.m. and was then made to wait in
the tarmac till 6 p.m.
2.0 Identify the apparent cause of the delay and discuss what may have been done to
prevent it.
The apparent cause of the tarmac delay in Kansa International Airport for the airplane of
Delta airlines is an icy storm that was taking place. It has been reported by the airlines
company that the tarmac delay took place as a result of the combination of freezing rain in a
persistent manner, de-icing complications and due to the reason of the limitation regarding
the time period for which the flight crew can be performing their duty because of the calamity
(Tang, 2015). The initial problem was the condition of the weather, but when the ice has been
removes from the run way and the flight was about to take off, the shift of the pilot was over,
and the tarmac delay extended for another one hour. This last reason of tarmac delay cannot
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be due to the weather condition as it is the showcase of the terrible management capability of
Delta airlines.
3.0 Describe the responses from the customers involved using the categories from the
Global Feature: Service Recovery across Cultures (see attached picture)
When there is a failure in a particular service, then the blame for the event is spontaneously
inferred by the customers. When an unexpected event took place due to an external factor,
then the customers are needed to be explained for the purpose of diminishing the blame of the
customers towards the firm and doubt the service quality of the firm. This takes place
situation taken place for customers from the western culture. On the other hand for the
customers of the eastern culture there is hardly any significance for the explanation a service
failure and they give preference to remedies and speedy solution for the problem associated
with the service failure and an apology from the manager (Baranishyn, Cudmore and
Fletcher, 2010). Hence, the tolerance level of the customers belonging to the eastern culture
has a very low tolerance towards uncertainty or ambiguous situations.
In case of outcome fairness the western customers are interested in receiving tangible
compensation such as discount when service failure occurs compared to the eastern
customers. In the western culture when an explanation of a service failure is given then the
customers can be stopped from thinking that the company is incompetent, but on the other
hand the customers of the eastern culture treatment of the customers in a formal and
courteous manner is more important than any compensation.
4.0 Identify and briefly describe "fairness themes" that may apply in this case
Outcome fairness is the result that received by the customers with respect to a complaint and,
in the case of the tarmac delay for Delta airlines the outcome fairness has been unfair. In spite
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of the fact that there is presence of rule for compensating each passenger for a tarmac delay
beyond 3 hours not compensation has been received by them. Procedural fairness is the rules
and policies as well as the timeliness of the processing of a complaint (Baranishyn, Cudmore
and Fletcher, 2010). The procedural fairness in case of the delta airlines tarmac delay is
unfair as no polices has been implemented in the situation and the airlines management were
not even bothered to take into consideration that the sift of their present pilot is going to end
by sometime which has extended the delay.
5.0 Identify remedies applied by the airline.
The first firm response that could have been taken by the airlines company is “Do nothing”.
This response has not been executed by the company has significant effort has been made for
clearing off the ice from the runway. The next firm response that is executed is “Explaining
what happened” and this response has been executed by the Delta airlines and Kansa
International airport as they have provided the explanation that the condition of the weather is
to be blamed for the tarmac delay. The next firm response that can be executed is “providing
the customers an opportunity of venting compensation”. This response has been taken as
some of the passengers were allowed to move out of the flight. Regarding the firm response
or remedy of “apologize to the customers”, this action has not been taken as per the opinion
of most of the customers (Kontoyiannakis et al. 2009). And the firm response of “assuring
customers that the problem will not occur again” has been executed as the airport authority
and Delta airlines has promised not to cause any such tarmac delay in future.
6.0 Describe what internal coordination and communication must occur within the
airline in order to respond and recover from such delays
The internal coordination that is needed to be executed in an automated methods and the
adoption of verbal methods is to be done among the crew and management of Delta Airlines
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and there is also the requirement of the utilization of both the above methods for ensuring
complete communication as well as situational awareness.
Internal communication is to be executed among the airlines management and the airlines
management and the communication technique that is to be used is the one that would be
emphasising collaborative as well as consensus decision making (Yan et al. 2016). The
internal coordination and communication was not efficient for the tarmac delay case of Delta
as no communication has been made between the pilot and the management of Delta airlines.
Conclusion
The airline recovery plan that was executed is has not been sufficient enough for maintain a
continued relationship with the customers. Therefore, the management response plan during
the tarmac delay is to be strengthened further.
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Reference List
Baranishyn, M., Cudmore, B.A. and Fletcher, T., 2010. Customer service in the face of flight
delays. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 16(3), pp.201-215.
Kontoyiannakis, K., Serrano, E., Tse, K., Lapp, M. and Cohn, A., 2009, December. A
simulation framework to evaluate airport gate allocation policies under extreme delay
conditions. In Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) (pp. 2332-
2342). IEEE.
Tang, R., 2015. Airline Passenger Rights: The Federal Role in Aviation Consumer
Protection.
Yan, C., Vaze, V., Vanderboll, A. and Barnhart, C., 2016. Tarmac delay policies: A
passenger-centric analysis. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 83, pp.42-
62.
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