When Airlines Remembered What Really Fuels their Business

The big story over the weekend was Spirit Airlines going out of business. It’s sad, sure, but was anyone really surprised? 

To begin with, air travel is a notoriously difficult business to be in. Especially when your only value proposition is having the lowest prices (which A. forbids you from ever raising them, even when it’s warranted, and B. results in giving your passengers an increasingly toxic, antagonistic and extractive customer experience), leaving you without any room for maneuver. The recent rises in oil prices caused by the Iran situation was Spirit’s final straw. RIP.

But what’s more interesting to us is how other US carriers immediately stepped up to take care of the Spirit customers who were adversely affected by the latter’s sudden demise. For example:

• United Airlines launched several new initiatives to help Spirit customers, including price-capped, one-way tickets from most cities where Spirit flew (Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, Newark, New Orleans – all the cool ones) for the next two weeks.
• JetBlue announced it would support Spirit customers and team members affected by the airline’s shutdown by offering $99 rescue fares to assist stranded travelers, capping fares to ensure affordable rebooking options, expanding its presence at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport with 11 new cities, and extending its jumpseat agreement for Spirit pilots and flight attendants trying to get home.

Very nice of them, certainly. But no, this wasn’t altruism. This was marketing. Some of the most genius PR we’ve seen in a while. 

By going the extra mile to help stranded Spirit passengers out, they’re building trust and goodwill. They’re also giving the passengers a chance to experience their service – a free trial, of sorts. Pending they have a positive experience, this will hopefully make a lot of people consider them as their new go-to airline. It’s also a chance for them to win brownie points with the FAA, never a bad thing. 

(And we assume all this can be used as a (ahem) tax write-off, minimizing their costs, etc.)

So the next question is, how much would it have cost these airlines to build up this level of social trust so quickly using more conventional means, like an advertising campaign? In today’s hyper-fragmented media landscape, one shudders to think.

The lovely people over at Unreasonable Hospitality define hospitality as “Being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships.” This is exactly what these airlines are doing, and we think it’s a damn smart move. 

In an increasingly chaotic, fragmented, distrustful, atomized world of manipulative companies greedy for every penny, trust isn’t the NEW hard currency, trust is the ONLY hard currency. 

Nothing could ever replace Spirit Airlines’ spirit (ha), but someone is bound to take its place. The airline most likely to inherit Spirit’s customers won’t necessarily be the one with the cheapest seats or the slickest ad campaigns, it’ll be the one that showed up when people were stranded, stressed, and vulnerable. 

Because in the end, customers rarely remember who marketed to them the loudest. But they will remember who helped them get home.