Now that the Spirit Airlines email-gate incident seems to be turning into a full-blown scandal, it is time to ask a question that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue: Should Ben Baldanza step down as the airline’s chief executive?
In order to answer that question, let’s hit the rewind button. About a week ago, Baldanza answered a note from passengers Jim and Christy Boswell, who had missed a concert because a flight delay, with these instructions: “Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. 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.”
But then Baldanza did a bad thing. Instead of replying to Pasquale, he apparently hit “reply to all” and sent his email to the Boswell’s, too. And they forwarded the correspondence along to tech blogger and fellow Orlando resident Alex Rudloff. The rest, as they say, is history.
Travel bloggers have taken up this cause like nothing else. For example, my friend Wendy Perrin, who never blogs about the same thing twice, devoted two blog postings to Spirit — one on Friday, the other yesterday.
Mark Ashley of Upgrade-blogging fame probably put it best when he said the email-gate incident had gone viral.
Baldanza is no stranger to controversy. When he was a vice president at US Airways, he made similar comments about passengers, which led the creation of a grassroots organization of its frequent fliers. At the time, my travel writing colleague and friend Joe Brancatelli suggested US Airways was trying suicide.
Now Spirit finds itself in a similar predicament. It has instituted numerous unpopular fees and has shown such indifference toward customers that they’ve had to go to court to get what they deserve. Ultra low cost carrier or not, this is no way to run an airline.
So should Baldanza go?
That’s something for Spirit’s shareholders to decide. Because if it were up to passengers, it’s unlikely that any airline CEO would still have a job.
Passengers have the power to make changes. They can stop flying Spirit, which would end Baldanza’s career. But he knows that’s not going to happen.
Baldanza is right. Next time we want to save a penny when we fly, we’ll be back.
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