The BA crash and the media
Guest blog from Andrew Caesar-Gordon, managing director of Electric Airwaves, a leading media, crisis and presentation training agency. www.electricairwaves.com
Last Thursday’s crash of a British Airways Boeing 777 at Heathrow Airport should have been a media disaster for BA. Yet within 24 hours, BA had turned its worst accident in 32 years into a PR triumph. It has emerged with reputation enhanced and several key messages/ implied competitor differentiations firmly locked in the public consciousness. How did they do it?
Most importantly, BA went straight onto the front foot. Its response is a case study in swift and transparent media communication in early stage crisis; the effective exploitation of opportunity and spokespeople; and how to emerge stronger for the oxygen of publicity that has been afforded to you. I would be very surprised if flight bookings have not increased as a result of this incident.
BA Chief Executive, Willie Walsh, immediately took charge and gave a textbook crisis media press conference within hours of the incident. He stressed BA’s commitment to its customers (repeating this word five times) and highlighted BA’s staff training programme four times. He even mentioned BA’s website address! What did the audience take away from this? – BA cares about passengers and it has an exhaustive staff training programme to keep them safe (which the audience might think other competitor - especially budget - airlines do not). Watch it here.
BA made the whole incident a positive ‘people’ story focused on the experience and expertise of the aircrew (lessons learnt from Branson’s management of the Virgin train crash in Cumbria in February 2007). BA cleverly allowed the captain to take all the plaudits for saving the plane, then revealed that it was the co-pilot who had actually handled the landing (thus ensuring acres more positive coverage) and then reinforced the messages of teamwork, trust and training of BA crew.
Holding the aircrew press conference in BA’s headquarters, surrounded by BA workers was a stroke of genius and daring (all those journalists in the same place as disaffected employees!). Having come out to the deafening applause of their colleagues and delivered their statement, it would have been a mean spirited journalist who caviled at their achievement or raised issues about what lay behind this celebration of bravery. The press conference defined coverage for days. View it here.
There comes a stage in any crisis when the media cast around for new angles and possible negatives. In this case, BA’s much repeated excellent safety record gave them a degree of fireproofing; coverage about the aircraft itself allowed BA to highlight the youth, environmentally friendliness and safety record of its modern fleet; complaints by some passengers about BA handling of passengers on the ground were swiftly explained, rebutted and apologized for; BA worked closely with BAA, the investigators and others to ensure messages were aligned; and the premature attempt by NGOs to use the crash to secure coverage for their opposition to further development at Heathrow gained no traction. Electric Airwaves trains organisations including 30 of the FTSe100 to manage media interviews and crisis situations. As one of our journalists put it to me this morning – “the real shock news here is that BA got it so right!”
Andrew Caesar-Gordon
Andrew@electricairwaves.com