Corporate Apologies and Southwest Airlines

One would think that the rule of thumb when an organization is accused of being unfair or accused of mistreating its consumers that the first response would be to apologize. However, this is not the case with all organizations. In fact some organizations will wait to make any type of apology, even if it is informal. I think this is bad PR. I believe that as an organization you are supposed to consider the client. I mean one must be realistic and think that the client or consumer is not always going to come first, but in the Southwest Airlines case this should have been the issue.

When Southwest Airlines kicked Kyla Ebbert off the plane because of her short mini-skirt there was an immediate uproar. The media was eating this up, saying that Southwest Airlines over reacted and the only reason why Kyla Ebbert was asked to leave the plane was because she was an attractive young woman. Personally, I didn't find her outfit that offensive, I have seen much worse in Wal-Mart. Southwest Airlines didn't even attempt to make an apology especially when Ebbert made it perfectly clear that she was offended and couldn't understand why she was being asked to leave the plane. Intially the airline refused to make an apology to Ebbert, it wasn't until Ebbert appeared on numerous talk shows that Southwest finally decided to make the apology, but they shouldn't have wasted its time.

As quoted from the so called apology the CEO stated "we were caught with our pants down and we were looking for the naked truth..." so where dose the apology come into play. I mean yes the airline apologized, but where was the sincerity? I mean really, if you are going to apologize, don't be smart ass' and do it for the right reasons. If a company is only going to apologize to get the media off its back then don't bother. Finally, this so called apology did nothing but enrage the public even more and it certainly didn't make Ebbert feel any better.