Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
"Say nothing lessons" What???
So, Alan Joyce fronting media and being broadcast all over the world within an hour of the QF32 incident (once the aircraft had landed safety) and grounding the entire A380 fleet was 'saying nothing'. Further, after the whole thing had been dealt with Qantas allowed crew to speak openly about the incident to Four Corners, as did Joyce and senior engineering people.
Again, how is that 'say nothing'.
I believe the Qantas reaction to QF32 was lauded as an excellent example of how a company should respond and the Rolls-Royce reaction was used as an example of the complete opposite.
On top of that, the media glossed over the fact that another prominent and supposedly 'untouchable' carrier based in Asia had their A380s back in the air within days in circumstances that couldn't possibly have provided enough time for the proper inspections to be done but as they are a media darling and don't have a kangaroo on the tail, this was completely ignored by the media at the time.
Just to clarify QF32 was far an ideal example of proactive crisis communications - it is used by several comms professionals to demonstrate what not to do. As a reminder: QF initially denied the event - in fact there's a grab from Sky where Olivia is denying outright saying words similar to: "there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest the aircraft is a Qantas plane" vision cuts to twitter pic of villager holding up panel with logo - then to grab of ATC comms recorded by planespotter and posted to soc media.
Joyce was MIA for a considerable period (it was more than hour BTW) with the exec focus being one eye on the IOC the other on the ASX - I can tell you authoritatively that the initial media requests were met with an absolute fob off. (that's one of the reasons why so many journos write crap because airlines don't get proactive)
As for your reference to the open access given to 4 corners etc... two well connected experienced journos had the RR link and evidence absolutely nailed on the day as they were already working on the RR story with a lot of evidence from local and OS insiders. Prior to Joyce appearing they were asked (begged) to 'hold it' on the promise of an absolute exclusive and that no one else would get given this 'access' - they honoured the request in good faith and didn't slam Joyce with it at the presser; but they were later ripped off when they objected to the Q requested, highly massaged production approach that 4 corners and 9 eventually agreed to. (In fact one of them was lied to about crew not being avail for a pre-arranged interview....said journo then saw a camo from another network at Syd Dom on his way to shoot them beside the 380 parked in the hangar)
Regarding last Friday's incident - it was denied with the standard "we are not aware of any incident" last weekend. The CC debrief and follow up in HKG was (I'm told) far from best practice - the CC were not even told the truth and I hear that their union was kept in the dark and had to extract info.
The current anecdotal reporting, pax quotes coupled with the brush off 'it was just unexpected severe turbulence line' only has escalated the scare factor in this story eroding public faith.
Baseline: in a crisis an organisation has 3 minutes at best to set the agenda present the facts or if the facts are unknown, take control. Like with 32, it didn't happen.
Had QF acted last Friday with a proactive factual statement immediately after receiving the info in the IOC, they could have opened up the issue and closed it back down - the net outcome would have been appropriate recognition of the operating crew rather than the mish mash of out of context tech facts.
Such prompt action also eliminates the speculation and (less than responsible often uninformed) 'suspicions' that are now being circulated in some areas.
I do however agree with you 100% that RR in the 32 incident acted arrogantly and was wilfully misleading and deceptive.
I'll will wait for the investigation report - as we all should!
AT
