They say that three’s the charm. Not for Australia’s Qantas Airways. Three widely reported safety incidents in as many weeks have passengers and Qantas employees concerned and Australian safety authorities on alert.
Qantas is actually among the world’s safest air carriers, with not a single fatal accident in almost 90 years of commercial operation. But that was yesterday. Now, with three emergency landings one after another putting Qantas in the news, outgoing CEO Geoff Dixon admits the airline has some work to do restoring its reputation.
Australian regulators have now begun an emergency review of Qantas safety procedures. Qantas employees are expressing concern. The head of the Australian flight attendants union has asked for a meeting with Qantas officials to discuss the situation. And consumers are obviously wary.
Thus far, however, Qantas is taking the right approach to easing its stakeholders’ minds. Company officials responded to the first incident by ordering an immediate inspection of the oxygen canisters in all its 747 airliners. Qantas would have been perfectly justified to wait until it had more information before undertaking such a sweeping inspection, but executives resisted that temptation.
Following one of the most basic principles of crisis communication, Qantas moved quickly to reassure nervous passengers with expressions of concern, commitment, and above all, fast action.
If Qantas were making its case on its record alone, as unassailable as that record may be, the company would be failing to offer the necessary emotional reassurances that an audience concerned about its safety needs to hear. Simply telling customers that they are worried about all the wrong things (air travel is still, by far, the safest mode of transportation on the planet and Qantas’ safety record is the envy of the industry) is never much help to a company that is dealing with an unexpected flood of scary headlines and graphic YouTube videos. In such a situation, you have to take action and be seen doing it – and that is precisely what the embattled airline has done.
Qantas may be a rookie in the crisis game; but, thus far, the company is handling newfound safety concerns like an old pro.
David Bartlett, Senior Vice President of Levick Strategic Communications, is one of the country’s most sought after communications strategists and executive coaches. An expert crisis manager with more than 30 years experience on both sides of the camera as a journalist and industry spokesman, David has helped top executives at multinational corporations, trade associations, and NGOs communicate effectively through the media with a variety of key stakeholder groups.
