Twa Flight 800

TWA Flight 800

On July 17th, 1996, about 20:31 EDT, TWA Flight 800 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York after an explosion and inflight breakup. All of the 230 passengers and crew members aboard this flight were lost. There were no suggestions from the flight crew that anything was wrong with the plane preceding the explosion. The crash was so unexpected and tragic. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the cause of the TWA Flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank, resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty. However, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was the combination of an overseen error, such as corrosion or contamination of an electrical fuel quantity indicating system component with the fuel tank, combined with a short circuit or other mistake outside of the tank that allowed extreme current to enter the fuel quantity indicating system wiring, therefore spreading the high energy into the center wing tank. The high energy, combined with the hidden mistake (corrosion or contamination) caused an electrical arc. The board recommended TWA primarily to reduce fuel tank flammability, minimize fuel tank ignition sources, re-evaluate airplane design and certification standards, and re-evaluate maintenance and aging of aircraft systems.

This crash was devastating to all who were involved, including families, close friends, and to TWA itself. This airline needed to recover from this incident in order to strive in the business, or they would otherwise fall into deep debt, and eventually just collapse. The recovery would take some time and extreme effort from within the airline. TWA will have to forecast and assess the damages done to their airline, change marketing schemes, change passenger fares, improve maintenance efficiency goals and guidelines, make additions/upgrades to the plane itself and airline overall, address the human resources aspect including unions, as well as financing (controlling the debt and predicting future debt), and looking at the international effect of the crash.

The first step is to forecast. Forecasting is the attempt to measure demand in a future length time period. This can be in terms of revenue, or physical volume such as passengers. There are many methods that are based on the factors that lay within, including availability of data. One method is the casual method; this is based on statistical data. This method is used by finding variables that explain the changes in the variable to be forecasted. The other method is the judgmental forecasting. This method of forecasting is an educated guessing method based on intuition. This can be used when there is no information or very little historical data is available.

Now looking into this incident, TWA needs to find a method for them to use in order to forecast the total number of passengers that board following the accident. The best method to figure this out would be the casual method. If you go by using the judgmental method, it could be hit or miss, but in this case it is a plane crash, which has happened before so we could look at past accidents. After looking at the past accident, we can find how that airline suffered after the crash and even look at the cyclical variations this airline had. These statistics will prove to show how much percent the enplanements will go down, or in a bizarre case, actually increase within the time span after the accident.

The next step to recovery will be to change or perfect marketing strategies following the crash. It is important that even though there was a flaw in the plane on TWA's end, to focus on the positives when marketing. Passengers at this time will be reluctant to fly with us or any airline in that fact due to the past circumstances, so the marketing needs to be strong and effective during this time period. I suggest the "market development" strategy, which focuses on new target groups. The first new target group could be athletic teams such as teams from the NFL. Sports interest is growing at a constant level, advertisements are all over every game, and once you start getting your airline name out there, passengers will start to come back.

Another marketing strategy will go one-in-one with the next step to recovery. This strategy is called "market penetration". This strategy penetrates the current aspects of the company. Price reduction will be the main strategy. Using promotional fares, passengers see the price compared to other airlines and almost have no other choice but to go with your tickets. This is an effective way to fill empty seats especially during off-peak travel periods. The demand will go down for this airline, so the company will be losing money during this period. This price reduction will be hard due to the loss in money, but a major step in recovery will be to get the customers back first, regardless of the cost, which can be paid back later. Since the marketing scheme changed to attract professional sports teams now, TWA can use "introductory fares" for these teams while they're in the first 30-45 day period in this market. Another strategy can be targeting the northeast region that has been affected by this crash the most. This is form of strategy called "directional pricing". This will get customers back in the region you will need it most. If others around the world see people in the northeast using TWA, then it will be a chain-reaction, leading back to recovery.

Since this crash according to the NTSB, was due to a fault in the fuel tank and a short circuit, many passengers will not fly TWA due to the maintenance standpoint. They will believe that this accident will happen again if we keep the same maintenance efficiency goals, so they have to change. The out-of-service time can't be at the minimum anymore, the airline must reduce planned utilization of the aircraft to allow for proper maintenance procedures to be followed. The allowable time the carrier should use for inspection and overhaul programs must the maximum amount possible, eventually costing a lot of money for the airline, but eventually worth it. TWA will have to make sure the inspectors and trained specialist by the FAA have the credentials that are required to successfully maintain their aircraft.

A major accusation of TWA is that they