The airlines were basically trying to punish their customer for their own operational problems. How come that you found out that employees also need to fly after boarding passengers? They could reschedule anyone offering benefits before even they get to the airplane.

Besides, I’ve noticed that company’s over commitment conservatism is something we need to blame here. In the first letter of CEO to employee’s it’s clear that he thinks employees did right thing by following the written rules and procedures. It was written in their rule book to call police in such situations.

But if we want to apply this lesson to our business, instead of writing those lengthy guidelines we can say to them: “Do whatever that is best for a customer”. But not hurting safety and benefits of other customers. According to this rule, the best thing for customers would be offering much more compensation for someone to get off. After all, there will be people who will agree to the compensation.

Long time ago, I worked for a company that wouldn’t allow us, the support agents to offer refunds. It was in company’s policies not to offer refunds. We only refunded them by their request (not by our own initiative). There were lots of times, when I desperately wanted to offer a refund, for deeply laying customers down as a team. But I couldn’t. Those dumb policies are real obstacles for a successful business.