15 injured in ‘serious’ stall alert incident on Qantas flight

[AerialPerspective]

Originally Posted by airtags

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

Personally I think that's a little harsh. As anyone in the industry knows, rumors can be rife and uninformed comment can come from anywhere. I can well imagine there was confusion initially while facts were ascertained. I seem to remember MW were monitoring the the aircraft data and were trying to establish in the absence of comms with the aircraft what was going on. I think any reasonable organisation would hold off until it had verified facts. I do remember reading there was initial confusion but that is surely more to the do with the nature of modern communications and not some oblique attempt to cover something up. When Qantas denied the incident, they could not possibly have known someone on Bantam Is was about to post a tweet of an engine cowling or part thereof. I think FAR too much emphasis and credence is put on individuals posting on social media who are largely uninformed and I blame the media for that because they promote it the interests of sensationalism rather than good journalism - and I can imagine the confusion, does Qantas confirm it on the basis of a tweet or do they say 'no comment' and appear to be hiding something or do they just remain silent for a short period of time and then come out with correct information that they have been able to verify. I think this is now days like peeling away the layers of an onion and all companies need to adapt to how to manage this, as does the media need to do somewhat better than run front page headlines based on the figurative 'epic fail' tweet.
I can't comment on the 4 corners info you've provided because I am not privy to that information. I have heard numerous corporate image consultants however, report that in their view the final analysis was that Qantas came out of this looking fairly professional whereas RR had a lot of work to do to restore their credibility. All companies will attempt at times to ensure a message is crafted in a way that is perceived in the right light and is not misconstrued and this can sometimes appear as evasive. I don't see here the type of action carried out by other operators in the past such as raiding a Pilot's house (allegedly) and seizing documents material to an investigation or practically perverting the course of justice to protect an image ("an orchestrated litany of lies...").

Finally, absolutely... we should always wait for the final report and last word would be there were probably several ways it could have been handled better but certainly the actions of the crew played very positively for Qantas.