Problem Solving

Name:

Solve the following problem using the first three steps of the analytical problem-solving model summarized in Table 3.1. Your submission should identify your work for each step.

You’re the flight director for an airline in a Midwestern city.

One winter day your airport is forced to close because of a blizzard. The runways are being plowed just enough to permit a few inbound planes to land occasionally but no outbound flights can take off. In anticipation of the airport reopening you have thirty flights carrying four thousand people waiting near/on the runways. As time goes on however, you have no indication of when the airport will allow flights to depart.

While the airport is responsible for opening and closing the airport, as the flight director your responsibility is your flights. Your airlines policies and practices call for putting passenger safety first, but they don’t cover this type of situation.

What should you do?