Ethiopian Airline Crisis
Ethiopian Airlines Crisis:
This past week Ethiopian Airline experienced a crisis no airline company wants to experience; their flight on a 737 Boeing Max 8 jet crashed 6 minutes after takeoff. All passengers and crew reported dead. It’s rare that I write about a crisis like this commending the company, but Ethiopian Airline did everything right in their time of crisis.
Ethiopian Airline have been flying the plane since Boeing debut it some years ago. Everything according to Ethiopian Airline's pre-check indicated a problem with the plane. Here is how they made sure they would survive this time.
First, they were immediate with their response to the world alerting everything they knew as soon as it happened. They broke the story therefore controlling the narrative. In a situation where life is lost it is imperative that companies are the first to report. When you let another entity report you risk them telling the wrong narrative, as well as, the speculation from the public that you are trying to cover up a scandal or naïve to its existence.
They gave constant updates as the situation unveiled. Its not enough to just alert the public of a crisis when you do you need to give constant updates, so it doesn’t give the press time to speculate. The press should only be reporting the press releases you’re putting out, not bringing in experts to give their opinion.
They responded, responding on social media to help the public gain a grasp on what’s happening is paramount to the story, if there is anything worse than the news reporting a false story its conspiracy theorist on twitter creating their narrative of how this was on purpose as a sacrifice to the illuminati. This lets people know what going on and you to control the exact story of the hashtag on twitter and other social media platforms.
They shifted the guilt. Ethiopian Airline’s plane checked out according to their pre-check. This is not the only incident with this type of plane. It was also pointed out the airplane had software that had not been reported to Ethiopian Airline, this couldn’t be their fault how could they know? This was Boeing's fault for selling them a faulty plane and not properly training the airline. And this worked as soon as they reported their facts of the story the world saw Ethiopian Airline, its passengers, and workers the victim and Boeing as the perpetrator.
They opened a full investigation and grounded all models of that plane. Doing this allows the world to see you are serious about wanting to find the issue and you won’t put profits ahead of customers. A move like this might hurt profits temporarily, but the public will respect you in the long run and you can have a future rather than risking a second disaster and losing everything.
This is an instance of a company handling a crisis perfectly even though tragically they lost everyone on board their flight. They were instant in reporting and honest, they were constant, they responded to social media, they shifted guilt and put people ahead of profits. Everything Ethiopian Airline has done has given them a chance to have a future while giving the public a chance to digest the story in a way that s favorable for them. Crisis are inevitable but you never want one of this magnitude, if you do have one if you respond properly like Ethiopian Airlines you might make it.
