Comments on: How can an airline brand survive a disaster? Lessons from the Air France 447 crash

By: David Parker Brown

David Parker Brown — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:19:29 +0000

It is difficult to imagine being on a plane during a crash. Even though their experience is horrid, it is at least short. The surviving family and friends are left with the pain, the heartache, and the not knowing for hours, days, years, and maybe forever.

I am sure the Air France (and really Airbus) brand has been damaged from this, but most likely only short term. No airline wants to lose passengers and a dedicated crew and I think Air France’s compassion is showing, which is great.

I don’t know if Twitter would have been an appropriate tool in this case. Trying to convey remorse and important details of the accident with 140 characters would be hard and almost insulting.
Hopefully we won’t have to go through this again anytime soon, but if we do we can only hope airlines will learn some lessons from Air France.

David
The Airline Blog

By: Theo Priestley

Theo Priestley — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:18:34 +0000

think you’ll find there was a lot of information not disclosed to the press for obvious reasons. Do you really think treating an air disaster as a source of information on Twitter is the really sensitive option for a major company ?

By: Randall Hensley

Randall Hensley — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:13:23 +0000

I think they’ve done a good job of showing empathy and humanity in the wake of the disaster. They also have a bit of an advantage in that the news is intermittent, with it being strung out over a two-week period. It is truly sad, as most of these disasters are.

However, I feel that the Concorde accident did more immediate and long-term damage to the brand. It was sudden, highly visible, and had huge impact on not only the Air France brand, but also British Airways. It was also rather demoralizing internally [ maybe even nationally ] since they had taken so much pride in the Concorde. [ And they should've realized that the planes were getting too old. ]

The Air France brand will survive, as it did before, but not without a price.

Just my thoughts,

By: Kunal (Bony) Sharma

Kunal (Bony) Sharma — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:08:18 +0000

Air France has done an excellent job of controlling the media circus and taking care of the relatives of the victims.
As a safe and high operational std airline they will survive the crash and will not got labeled an unsafe airline.
It was excellent to see the cheap “TERRORIST ANGLE” blame was not used to use time to create a media spin.
AF remained honest and clear on the info.

By: Nathaniel Forbes

Nathaniel Forbes — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:19:31 +0000

Do you have a screen shot of the AF no-graphics web site? It appears to have been taken down by now. Thanks. Nathaniel Forbes
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielforbes

By: Oussama Salah

Oussama Salah — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:01:07 +0000

No matter how much we prepare and practice nothing prepares an airline for the real thing, a response to a disaster. Air France had a problem, no idea of where and how this crash happened. However, they rose to the occaision by showing the humane side of a large corporation.
Air France catered for those who were really and directly affected. As for the use of Twitter and other social media engines would have not added value to the effort of offering solace and comfort to the bereaved next of kin and friends. It might have provided information to the general public and in this case there was nnot much to offer. To use Twitter for promotions and disruptions is one thing but develop Emergency Response in a major way on Twitter is another. I don’t think an air disaster is the appropriate time to experiment.
On the whole Air France did and continues to do the right thing and I hope will continue to do this until such time enough is known to provide those affcted with appropriate closure.
Kudos to Air France for doing the right thing and preventing a media circus

By: David Lamb

David Lamb — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:12:55 +0000

Carter – to take your comment one step further regarding when to talk about how you did on the “checklist”. While it is never too early to talk about how the checklist has been performed, I believe it must be a continuous discussion during and after the crisis. It is important, both for the airline and the individuals involved in the response, to talk about both what is going right and wrong, but more importantly, to check on the mental and physical well being of the people managing the response. In my training in CARE (actually I went through ASSIST), it was important to monitor the people conducting the response as it was to conduct the response itself. Sometimes, people don’t cope well and as a result, they don’t do or say the right thing and that can cause as much trouble as a step left out of the process (which can also happen). Taking care of ourselves and our team during the response is extremely important, as if someone can’t cope or if someone is having a difficult time, they need as much help as the people we are helping.

Regarding your comment about languages, I strongly believe that there should be language qualified staff to manage the languages of the passengers and the families. In the event that qualified staff do not exist, then interpreters must be used. However, if intepreters are used, then they should go through the same training as the staff so that they understand the meaning behind what they are translating and not just translate the person literally. As one who speaks four languages, I can tell you that there are distinct nuances within those languages and if one doesn’t understand the context, that can do more damage than having no translator at all.

As I have said, social networking has no place in airline accident response, since it is generally speaking a one-way communication to everyone except the families of those affected by the accident. In that respect, two way communication is necessary and therefore the aspects of social networking that were raised by Shashank in the original posting are not germane, nor are they appropriate.

Finally, if the post accident process is managed correctly, the brand will not only survive, it will become more respected. The SR111 response is still today the gold standard in terms of how post accident response is managed and while Swissair did not survive as a company, it’s brand today still exists as an example of quality and precision. That luckily carried over to Swiss and as a result (with a little help from LH), they are the Phoenix that rose from the ashes of Swissair.

By: Allan Lynch

Allan Lynch — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:08:30 +0000

I whole-heartedly disagree with you about the airline using Twitter to dispense news about the crash. An airline crash and loss of hundreds of lives is too monumental an event to toss it out into the world in 140 characters. To throw out the crash news in this manner would be akin to announcing a new bar opening.

140 characters, sent out in the same format that others are telling me what they had for lunch, is beyond disrespectful and shallow. It’s flippant.

It is not like those of us in the western world don’t have a myriad of information sources. There are cable news networks 24/7, there is radio, there is the internet, there are cell phones. Some events are too great and too serious to be flipped off in this manner. If it was important enough for you to know about immediately, someone would have reached you directly.

But what difference does it make to most of us if we heard 10 minutes after the event or 30 minutes or within the hour? It’s not going to have helped save any of those lives. And what do you learn with Twitter? A plane is missing. When I heard I figured it was down, but there was no confirmation of that for some time. Immediate news is not always accurate news and that causes more pain for those left on the ground wondering and worrying.

By: Julie Steadman

Julie Steadman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:58:55 +0000

Adding a personality to the brand ?? This is a tradegy. People do not want to see personalities. Too many marketing people spoil the broth……

By: Geraldine Cruz

Geraldine Cruz — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:49:16 +0000

In my humble opinion, the fact that this happened within the last 5 days makes it premature to assess business lessons from the disaster. People were killed, and their families and loved ones are grieving. The focus should be on compassion and respect for them. Think of what it would have been like if we (and I mean that in the collective sense) were opining over business or security strategies 5 days after 9/11. We are humans first.