Despite
its long history dealing with crises, Southwest Airlines was deemed to be one
of the safest airlines worldwide, until April 17, 2018. On that day, Southwest
Flight 1380 from New York to Dallas had an engine exploded in midair, which
resulted in one passenger killed and seven others sustained minor
injuries.
According
to SituationalCrisis Communication Theory (SCCT; Coombs,
2007), this accident can cause a moderate reputational threat to Southwest
Airlines if it wasn’t handled properly, as the public tends to seek causes and
make attributions for an event.
Jennifer
Riordan died after being partially sucked out of a shattered plane window
following an engine explosion of Flight 1380. (Source: Reuters)
How did Southwest Airlines deal with the issue?
For
the following 2 days, Southwest Airlines communicated with the public with a
series of actions:
- CEO statement to passengers. On the same day of tragedy, Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines made a public statement, in which he expressed deep sympathy for the deceased passenger and her family; appreciation to staff involved; willingness to cooperate with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) during the investigation. The statement had earned hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube.
- Compensation to passengers. Passengers were sent $5,000 with no strings attached to help "ease the burden" of the situation. In addition to that, they were also sent a $1,000 Southwest Airlines travel voucher.
- Other actions. Survived passengers were offered everything they needed including travel and accommodation arrangements, trauma counseling, and other proper support. An Emergency Response Program was launched to help Southwest quickly response to the event. To reduce potential hatred from the public, Southwest also temporarily stopped advertising on social media. Moreover, its social media team kept extra tabs online for real-time information to find out exactly what people were saying, posting, and expressing.
By
reviewing the communication process of Southwest, we can identify several
strategies from ImageRepair Theory (IRT; Benoit, 1997), such as
corrective action and reducing offensiveness, which also conceived to be effective
by PR practitioners. However, the success of crisis communication required more
than that, just as AeronDavis (2000) concluded, the efficacy of PR was
determined by a combination of at least four factors – economic capital,
cultural capital, human resources, and strategic application. In this
sense, Southwest Airlines took advantage of its capitals and resources to the
most, under the guidance of effective communication strategies.
What was buzzing on media and social media?
Southwest
did an excellent job focusing their efforts on the affected passengers while at
the same time managing the media and the investigation.
The
TIME reported this incident from the perspective of commercial aviation safety,
a variety of information sources contributed to this piece – Southwest
Airlines, Aviation Safety Network, NTSB, US president. The tone was slightly
negative as shown in the title – Passenger Killed On Southwest Flight Is the First U.S. Commercial Airline Fatality In 9 Years. As revealed in the research by Nijkrakeet al. (2014), among five dominant news frames
– conflict, economic consequences, morality, human-interest, responsibility --
media tend to use multiple news frames comparing to the organization, and more
negative tones were found in media coverage when communicating on a
crisis.
An
interesting example that may present the effectiveness of Southwest’s crisis
communication was from the New York Times. On April 17, it reported the tragedy
in a neutral tone with the headline “Southwest Airlines Engine Explodesin Flight, Killing a Passenger”. While
on the following day, another piece from The New York Times titled “Southwest pilot of Flight 1380 isNavy veteran hailed for her ‘nerves of steel”,
which focused on the heroic pilot Tammie Jo Shults.
Moreover,
comments on Southwest’sTwitter were mostly praising about the
pilot.
If
anything we could learn from the Southwest case, as David Martin, founder of
Heed Public Relations, said: “Southwest leadership had a plan, stuck to it, and
kept the public and their customers up to speed on events throughout the
aftermath. And they did everything with obvious compassion.”
-----------------------
About
the author: Chanchan Zhang is a Master student at the
Department of Communication Science of University of Amsterdam, the track she’s
pursuing is Corporate Communication. She holds a degree in Psychology and has several years of experience working in advertising agency.
Reference
Aeron Davis. (2000). Public relations,
news production and changing patterns of source access in the British national
media. Media, Culture & Society. SAGA
Publications, Vol. 22: 39-59.
Benoit, W. L. (1997). Image repair
discourse and crisis communication. Public
Relations Review, 23(2), 177–186. doi:10.1016/S0363-8111(97)90023-0
Coombs, W. T. (2007). Protecting
organization reputations during a crisis: The development and application of
situational crisis communication theory. Corporate
Reputation Review, 10(3), 163–176. doi:10.1057/palgrave. crr.1550049
J. Nijkrake et al. (2014). Competing
frames and tone in corporate communication versus media coverage during a
crisis. Public Relations Review 41 (2015)
80–88, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.10.010
No comments:
Post a Comment