“Not the company we thought it was.” Southwest Airlines’ attempt at image repair during its october 2021 flight cancellation crisis

Abstract

Drawing from a blame narrative approach to apologic crisis management (Hearit, 2021; Seeger and Sellnow, 2016), and informed by Image Repair Theory (Benoit, 2015), this study explores Southwest Airlines defensive strategies during a 5-day period in October 2021 when it was forced to cancel more than 2200 flights and delay several hundred others leaving stranded, angry customers at airports around the United States. The current study begins by identifying specific message strategies used by the airlines and then describes how Southwest’s apologiae blended to form three primary counter narratives that attempted to shift its role from antagonist to protagonist: 1) Southwest was the victim of poor decisions made by the FAA, 2) the company and its CEO were heroes engaged in an effort to protect its hard-working employees and preserve their jobs, and 3) that it had actually handled the crisis well under the circumstances. This essay argues, however, that because Southwest did not initially accept responsibility for the cancellations, relied on justifications that were easily refuted, and then failed to propose corrective actions while expressing only regrets for the inconveniences it had created, its counter narratives were inconsistent with public expectations and, as a result, lacked empathetic narrative fidelity.