Opinion: The airline industry needs some disaster management lessons. Health care can help
The airline industry is often held up as a model of operational excellence — one that the health care industry would do well to emulate.
This summer, however, I was surprised to find myself in circumstances in which the reverse seemed true. Like thousands of travelers across the nation, I spent several days in July stranded in an airport with multiple canceled flights, lost luggage, and a whole lot of uncertainty about what to do with my hotel reservations. Customer service lines, overwhelmed by the surge of displaced travelers, snaked a quarter-mile down the terminal. Baggage claim was pandemonium — luggage strewn across the floor and carousels, a few employees frantically trying to process new claims. In short, it was a disaster.
