Once, Twice, Three Times a Crisis

Hey, remember that incident with Southwest Airlines? If you’re thinking “which one?”, you’re exactly right, my friend.

Jenny Zigrino addressing the flaws of Spirit Airlines on Conan

Overall, the airline industry has had its fair share of crises and bad PR: United Airlines’ hands-on approach of handling an overbooked flight only united passengers against them; passengers have been harassed for ‘Flying while Muslim’; pilots have habits of flying while drunk (turns out we like free booze a lot less when it’s our captains downing it), and let’s not forget about the blackest of all black sheep: Spirit Airlines.

Given the industry’s bad reputation, you would expect management across organizations to adjust their crisis communication accordingly – but apparently, not all organizations have a professional on board.

Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening

As mentioned by our fellow PR pro Chanchan on this blog, when in 2008, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a record penalty against Southwest Airlines for flying incompletely inspected planes, the airline made a crisis communication faux pas:  Southwest Airlines defended their actions by declaring that they had the FAA’s concurrence – the FAA responded by slapping Southwest Airlines with a $10 million fine.

In all fairness, Southwest Airlines did attempt to prevent a crisis by breaking the news about their own crisis first, also known as stealing thunder. In theory, stealing thunder should result in more positive jury verdicts, increased credibility, and lower guilt perceptions – but since it also attracts attention from journalists (who, as research has shown, will very likely frame the story as they wish  regardless of your intentions) it only works if you actually deal with the crisis, not if you “mistakenly” check the box that says you’ve ceased the violation.

I’m still standing

As it turns out, this wasn’t the only safety violation fine that Southwest Airlines has paid in the past years. Holes have torn open the roofs of two Southwest planes in flight, aircrafts overran the runway twice, multiple engines failed – yet for long the airline had a surprisingly clean record of zero fatalities in its 47-year history (because technically, the 6-year-old boy who was killed in one of their incidents was not a passenger).

So, when one of Southwest’s aircrafts’ engine exploded mid-air in 2018, killing one and injuring seven, this could have easily been a death blow to the company – but it managed to survive even this crisis. How?

Ground Control to Major Kelly

Indeed, as pointed out in Chanchan’s other blog, Southwest Airlines has stepped up its crisis communication game. Not only did they optimize their use of social media in handling their 2016 technical glitch, resulting in the cancellation of more than 250 flights; the 2018 case, involving a fatality, was addressed in the right way: passengers were compensated not only in the financial sense, but also with travel and accommodation arrangements and counseling. Social media, again, was used to avoid backlash by temporarily halting advertising. Most importantly, CEO Gary Kelly issued a timely and heartfelt statement to passengers, expressing his sympathy for everyone involved. Again, in 2019, Kelly appeared on multiple national outlets to account for the company’s decision to stop service at Newark airport and address issues concerning the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft (Southwest is an all-Boeing 737 carrier).

            Kelly did not solve these problems on his own. These crisis communication successes can be attributed to the fact that the organization’s leadership came together, created a plan and stuck to it (instead of abandoning ship) – because let’s not forget, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Screenshot taken from Twitter

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Kimberley Ho is a Communication Science student at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in Political Communication. She also holds an MA in International Relations from Leiden University, and studied at the University of Sydney and William & Mary, VA, USA. Used to make coffee for a living, because #liberalartsgraduate.