Business

Airline CEO Responds to Complaint: Hilarity Ensues

posted: 24 August 2007 05:48 pm ET

: Ben Baldanza, the CEO of Spirit Airlines, sits in the company's Miramar, Fla. office complex with models of the Airbus A320-family aircraft upon which the carrier's future fleet composition relies. In sending an internal memorandum regarding a customer complaint, Baldanza committed an e-mail gaffe that has the blogosphere talking. AP Photo/J. Pat Carter

An e-mail faux pas by Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza has created a public relations furor for the airline-- to the delight of bloggers.

Baldanza inadvertently sent an e-mail intended as an internal memo to a Spirit Airlines staff member to a couple who had e-mailed Baldanza a complaint about bad service on his airline.

The pair had requested a refund for the cost of a $376.84 trip ruined by a three-hour delay to their Spirit Airlines flight and Baldanza's e-mail was intended to instruct the staff member how to respond to them. "Let him tell the world how bad we are," Baldanza's scathing e-mail read in part.

The couple, a Florida pair named James and Christine, had written a long letter to Miramar, Fla.-headquartered Spirit Airlines seeking compensation when a three-hour delay to their flight caused them to miss a concert in Atlanta. They sought a refund to cover the costs of their airfares, hotel, concert tickets and airport parking fees.

Their letter, long but polite, explained that James and Christine were more angry over the rudeness and bad service they felt they had experienced at the hands of Spirit Airlines staff during the three-hour delay than at the fact of the delay itself. That's really why they were seeking compensation for their financial loss, they said.

James and Christine also told their story when commenting on a post by blogger by Alex Rudloff. Rudloff had posted an item entitled "Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines" after the airline canceled a flight to Las Vegas on which he had booked a seat.

Rudloff wrote that he had been disconnected several times when calling to re-book his flight (he was finally successful in re-booking) and a customer-service representative refused to refund him the $10 he had paid to have his bag checked each way.

Another commenter on Rudloff's blog site then posted the e-mail addresses for all of Spirit's senior managers. Seeing these, James and Christine decided to e-mail Baldanza their complaint directly. They also copied several other senior Spirit Airlines executives on the e-mail.

Baldanza read the couple's complaint and didn’t feel they had a case. He sent a curt e-mail to a Spirit marketing executive asking the staffer to respond to the complaint. However, to save time, Baldanza clicked on the "Reply to All" button and his supposedly confidential internal message winged its way to the couple too.

"Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny," read Baldanza's electronic memo.

As a result of his one-click slip, Baldanza's response is now being debated on various blog sites, including The Consumerist, Jaunted, Gadling, CEOSmack, Upgrade: Travel Better and elliot.org -- as well as getting extensive additional play on Rudloff's blog. The story has also been picked up by newspapers, among them the Orlando Sentinel.

Aviation.com couldn’t immediately reach Spirit Airlines for comment on Baldanza's e-mail gaffe. However, in an Aug. 24 article on the affair, the Orlando Sentinel quoted Alison Russell, Spirit Airlines' director of corporate communications in North America, as saying: "No, we really don't believe we have anything to apologize for regarding Ben's e-mail."

Russell told the newspaper: "I can tell you that Ben cares enormously about our customers and our customer service. Ben said what is exactly true: that we don't owe the customer anything. People can and do post whatever they would like on the Internet. But it cannot alter your adherence to your company policy or your procedures."

The popularity of Rudloff's blog post didn’t worry Russell, wrote the Orlando Sentinel. "Truthfully, I'm genuinely not concerned," she said. "People are going to have a blog for good things or bad things. We are very pleased with our customer service, we are very pleased with what we do."

Bloggers seem just as pleased with Ben Baldanza's e-mail expertise.