Crisis, Qantas, BP and holidays

Ed Fleming

With less than 48 hours to go before I get on a long haulflight for my holiday (yes I am excited), I started thinking about how glad Iwas not to be taking an Airbus A380. But then I thought how that might have been a bit unfair on both Airbusand Qantas.  The images of theengine that blew last week were enough to scare even the most hardy oftravellers, but looking back at the last week I would argue the crisis PR onthe back of the accident has been great. Qantas seems to have done everything by the book - it's been open,honest, thoughtful and diligent. Thankfully a near disaster was avoided which obviously helps, but youcan only do what you can do and I think they've done it well.  Social media has been a part of theplan and we can see how quickly the internet can savage a business these daysin the aftermath of a crisis.

I am, of course, referring to BP and the Gulf of Mexico oildisaster.  I watched the ‘no holdsbarred' documentary the other night and couldn't help but squirm at some of thetactics the CEO and BP used.  BPwasn't honest, it didn't know what it was doing and, to make matters worse, ithad a gaffe-prone CEO in Tony Hayward.  By his own admission he made mistakesand that he would do things differently, but the lack of honesty with themedia, the White House and the public only led BP to alienate itself from allthe stakeholders.

I obviously hope my flight is far less action-packed thanthe one that was heading from Australia to the UK, but hats off to the PR teambehind it.

See you in a couple of weeks.

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