You may ask What does public relations have to do with your BC/DR plan? Though this example is from early 2007, its a classic example worth exploring. In February 2007 JetBlue (NASD: JBLU), a low-cost airline, experienced systemwideproblems due to bad weather across much of the United States. In some cases, passengers were held on planes away from the gate for up to 8 or 10 hours. Although this was not an IT failure, it was a serious business disruption caused by bad weather. This is exactly the type of scenario a BC/DR plan for an airline should account for.

What would happen if bad weather forced us to cancel or delay flights across the United States? is the question the airline should have asked and answered prior to a weather event (and they may well have done so). However, they failed to address one of the most basic concerns. Many trapped passengers could not understand why the plane did not just taxi back to a gate and allow passengers to get off, or why portable stairs were not rolled up to the plane on the tarmac to allow passengers to disembark onto buses or other vehicles to take them back to the terminal. This was not done. News channels on TV and radio were quick to broadcast the news of these delays and passengers or those waiting for them alerted the media to these issues and the media frenzy began. When it was all said and done, all JetBlue could do was mop up the damage through its marketing and PR departments. In this case, they announced they were instituting a passengers bill of rights and would compensatepassengers who were delayed or rerouted. Was it too little, too late? Its too soon to tell what the long-term impact will be but the stock tumbled from a high of $16.62 per

share on January 16, 2007 to a low of $12.56 on February 20, 2007, a drop of almost 25%. It continued its downward slide through 2007 reaching a low that year of $6.00. But the bad news continued. In 2008, with the beginning of the real estateand banking meltdown, many companies shares were driving lower. JetBlue bottomed out at $2.96 in early 2009. Could the company recover from the loss in its market capitalization (price per share x number of outstanding shares)? Could the company recover from the loss in consumer confidence? Today their shares are trading around $6.00. While you may not be overly concerned with stock prices and valuation, you can clearly see the correlation between a companys future prospects and a series of communication failures. Interestingly, the company did survive and one of the ways it did so was to address these major gaps through communications.

Question: How do you think the company was able to survive i.e. what procedures or plans did they make in their BC / DR plan?