CASE • WWE: Emergency Response to Terrorism
Julie McDonald had just arrived at her desk at World Wide Express (WWE) headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a beautiful, sunny, and warm September morning, and Julie’s view of the WWE plane-loading ramp was quiet. All WWE flights had departed hours ago from the massive sorting facility at Louisville International Airport, and the planes were in cities all over the world awaiting that day’s cargo. She watched the sun glint off the tail of a giant WWE MD-11 as it sat in the maintenance hangar a few thousand feet down the ramp.
Julie had worked for WWE for eight years, during a time of rapid international expansion. She had spent time working in France and Japan for WWE, and now was a manager responsible for balancing loads on WWE’s international flights that connected with the Louisville domestic hub. Her job was a very “hands-on” position that involved constantly solving fast-changing puzzles of numbers of flights, aircraft capacity, flight times, and parcel volumes.
Just a couple minutes before 8 A.M., Julie walked out of her office into the hallway to grab her first cup of coffee of the day. From a conference room down the hall, she heard a very loud discussion competing with sound from a television set. She walked into the conference room to see five of her fellow WWE colleagues transfixed by the events unfolding on television. To her horror, she saw CNN reporting that an office tower at the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. She thought to herself: surely only a small plane, it couldn’t have been a jet. But as she watched the live CNN feed from New York, a second plane, clearly a very large jetliner, plowed into the second tower of the World Trade Center with horrible explosive force. The WWE employees were stunned speechless; they couldn’t move their eyes from the television screen.
Nancy Bourget, a French WWE manager now stationed in Louisville, was the first to break the silence. “Mon Dieu! This is terrorism. Oh, the people at work in New York!” Then the gray faces in the room blanched as Julie said “Whose planes were those?”
Julie ran from the conference room back to her office and called the WWE flight operations center. “Bob, flight ops” was the answer on the phone. “Bob, Julie McDonald in load management. Whose planes were those?”
“We don’t know; we’re on the phone to the FAA right now. We think they were passenger planes, not freight. We’re also contacting the few planes we have up right now. I’ll call you back when I know something.” Click.
Julie pointed her Web browser to ABCnews.com, which was sending a live video of the disaster in New York City. She didn’t know what to do. All she could think about were the thousands of people who work in the World Trade Center. Did they have a way to escape? Was there time for them to get out safely? As she stared at the monitor, the most surreal horror unfolded before her. A tower in flames collapsed as if it imploded. Julie’s phone rang once, twice, three times, four times before she realized her phone was ringing. “Julie, load management.”
“Bob in flight ops. Our planes are OK. The FAA is telling us to hold a line open for an urgent set of flight operations orders.”
“Bob. One of the towers just collapsed. I can’t believe I’m seeing this.” She heard confused discussion on the other end of the line.
“Gotta go,” and Bob hung up the phone. Julie returned to the conference room to find a dozen colleagues. Several were crying. One had become violently ill and ran to a restroom. Julie announced that they weren’t WWE planes. Her announcement met with blank stares. Nancy said, “Both towers are gone.”
Julie’s mind wandered beyond the incomprehensible events unfolding before her. Something inside was reminding her that this disaster would have immediate consequences for WWE and its customers. She had to return to work. There was no alternative.
As she reached her office, the phone rang again. “It’s Bob, Julie. The FAA has immediately grounded all U.S. airspace. Everything has got to land immediately. We just turned around our early flight out of Germany and sent it back. The flight from Japan is gonna land in the next hour in Anchorage. We have no idea how long this is going to last, but the FAA has never cleared all airspace over the whole country before. This is serious. You need to get your service interruption contingency plan going.”
“Right. Just got the email from Ron here too . . . did you get it? Meeting in the first floor conference room in 15 minutes.”
“Um, yeah . . . I’ll be there.”
Julie knew the contingency plan by heart. She’d written the section on load management. But they had never anticipated grounding their entire U.S. flight operations! She grabbed her contingency plan manual and a notepad and headed to the conference room.
The room was tense and small conversations were hushed. Bob stood to begin the meeting. “This is unbelievable. But we have to focus here. They weren’t WWE planes, and the FAA is shutting down all domestic airspace, including international arrivals. We’ve contacted all our planes, they’re OK, and we’ve returned them to base wherever possible. We’ve had a couple of landings where we shouldn’t be . . . got a flight from London just set down in Gander, as in Gander Newfoundland. The FAA said to expect 24 to 72 hours. Just unbelievable.”
Julie began to think of the WWE customers. Surely they would understand this service interruption was extraordinary. But how could WWE continue to function if no flights were moving?
Questions for WWE: Emergency Response to Terrorism
1. WWE offers several delivery time options, including next-day, two-day, and three-day shipping. What are the consequences of a disruption of 24 hours for each of those categories of service?
2. What are the consequences of a disruption of 72 hours for each of those categories of service? What consideration should be given to WWE service guarantees to their customers?
3. WWE operates its flight services on a “hub and spoke” system where packages are flown to an intermediate destination, sorted, and then flown to their final destination city. With the Louisville hub out of service, should all international hubs also be shut down? Should WWE flight operations worldwide be halted?
4. If the flight disruption lasts longer than 24 hours, what are some alternatives WWE could use to keep parcels moving?
5. If the flight disruption lasts longer than 24 hours, how might you modify the “hub and spoke” system temporarily?
“WWE:
Emergency Response to
Terrorism” Write a paper 600 words.
Double-spaced, APA 6th
edition format with
citations What would you do with the packages on board the London-to- Louisville flight that had landed in Gander?
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