How Qantas dealt with the 48-hour fleet grounding crisis and the A380 mid-air engine failure

How Qantas dealt with the 48-hour shutdown
and the A380 mid-air engine failure

Helping airlines & airports engage travelers profitably
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Qantas fleet is grounded for 48 hours
and chaos ensues


Anatomy of a crisis
The Qantas fleet grounding was a
decision made by the Qantas
CEO, Alan Joyce, on Saturday 29
October due to an ongoing battle
with unions.

Both customers and employees
were caught unawares.

Employees are not rostered for
social media duties on weekends

Employees were not rostered on in
key areas that normally enable and
assist in customer response on
social media.
www.SimpliFlying.com

Qantas‟ initial response

Initial tweets came from
@QantasMedia

@QantasMedia used as “breaking
news” channel

Retweeted from @QantasAirways

Ongoing updates from
@QantasAirways

Tone was
formal, accurate, factual, and
authoritative


Responding to the unfolding crisis

Response increased once there was
clarity about industrial situation and
if/when services would resume

Response to customers centrally
managed through @QantasAirways

High volume of enquiries and
response which made it difficult to
respond to all.

Eventually, tone shifted to
conversational and caring


Managing service recovery

@QFcustomercare assisting
@QantasAirways with recovery efforts

@QFcustomercare resourced by
dedicated Customer Care employees

Caring tone, without being too formal
or conversational.

Dedicated Twitter Customer Care form
used to gather more details privately
and to ensure an outcome.


Fallout
A flood of tweets appeared soon after Qantas‟ announcement suspending
services.

Source:
Trendistic

Qantas‟ initial “mechanical and impersonal” tweets came in for much
criticism. At its peak, "Alan Joyce", "Qantas" and "Anthony Albanese"
were all trending worldwide – indicating in excess of a 1000 tweets per
minute.
Parody accounts of Qantas and of Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas have been
set up.

Much anger against the CEO especially!


Social media hell
As thousands of passengers
faced cancelled
flights, confusion and chaos
reigned supreme, especially
on Twitter.

Moreover, Qantas appeared to
be slow in getting off the ranks.
A spate of discussions ensued
on social media, much of it
negative towards Qantas.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Qantas‟ seemingly
impersonal, one-way
information dissemination on
Twitter were severely
lambasted. www.SimpliFlying.com

Virgin jumps in and grabs some cake!
Virgin, meanwhile, jumped in
to rescue stranded
passengers and by all
accounts garnered near
universal praise for its
personal touch in addressing
passengers.

Even Richard Branson
himself tweeted
congratulating Virgin in its
efforts.

Meanwhile, Qantas tried to
save face after a horrible
start.

Contrasting tones making the difference?
While Virgin kept up a chatty, casual
conversation with customers on
Twitter, Qantas had to opt for
formal, non-engaging tweets.

While it‟s true that a conversational tone
makes the brand appear closer to the
customer and not indifferent to his/her
needs, the situation was unique.

In uncertain times, Qantas needed to
ensure that it was not “playing down the
issue” by being casual in its
conversations on Twitter.
Moreover, information-dissemination
mandated the adoption of such a tone.

But give credit where it‟s due!
In a difficult situation that was undoubtedly not as well managed as
it might possibly have been, Qantas did try to salvage some pride.

• Online claim and refund forms were created to assist customers
and reduce call volumes
• Dedicated Customer Care social media team responded to as
many enquiries as possible
• @qantasairways working closely with @qfcustomercare to direct
customers to the dedicated recovery team
• @qfcustomercare posts increased on average 167.35% per day
since the account was „reactivated‟ after the grounding
• Issues are resolved via DM or a link to a dedicated Twitter form
that is then handled by the Customer Care social media team
• Using Customer Journey Managers to communicate directly with
Flight and Cabin Crew onboard, as well as our passengers to
assist with sharing of information


The Verdict: Don’t Shoot the Messenger!
Those in charge of handling the
response were not necessarily the
ones responsible for the crisis.

• There was no prior warning, it
affected the whole fleet, there was
little information available, and
there was no immediate forecast
• No information was available to
the team beyond key messages
• The volume was simply too high
to successfully respond to all
customers
• It was necessary to provide
accurate information to the public.


Handling the crisis
Problem: Minimal information
available initially.

Solution: As information flowed
in, social media played a roll in
the larger communications
strategy through core accounts
(Facebook and @qantasairways)
to avoid mixed messaging and
confusion

Risks: Sensitivity of the situation
from a legal and communication
perspective
A potentially volatile audience of
stakeholders.

Putting the response in the context of limited
resources available
• There are 4 dedicated full-time employees that monitor and respond on
social media (including the Customer Care social media team)

• During the recent Qantas fleet grounding there was one full-time
employee to broadcast messages until further information about the
lockout and subsequent grounding was available

• After receiving clearer information about the situation, 6 full-time
employees were put on a rotating roster to respond to all genuine
customer enquiries and recover affected customers

• Social media employees normally operate approximately 9am –
5pm, however during the crisis employees worked many extra hours


What the numbers say
Increase of over 10,000
Facebook fans since Saturday 29
October

Increase of over 10,000 Twitter
followers of @qantasairways since
Saturday 29 October

Over 242,000 mentions of
Qantas in all social media
excluding Facebook between
Saturday 29 October and Tuesday
1 November (unprecedented for
Qantas in a three-day period)


Lessons for the future
Be Prepared: Develop crisis
management contingency
plans. It seemed that Qantas
was caught on the backfoot
without any previously planned
clear crisis management
strategy in place. They‟d want
to change that.

Flow of information: Improve
the flow from top management
to those handling the response
so that passengers receive
speedy, transparent and
effective communications.


Click here to download.


A380 engine failure on an ominous date
with a celebrity on board


Just when you thought it couldn‟t get worse...
As if many planeloads of problems
weren‟t enough, one of the 4 engines
on a Qantas A380 from Singapore to
London failed in mid-air and the flight
was diverted to Dubai.

Coincidentally, this happened exactly
a year to the date of the Qantas A380
engine explosion over Singapore last
year.

To top it all, the British writer, actor
and importantly HUGE Twitter celeb
(3.5 million+ followers) Stephen Fry
was on board. And he was
tweeting…

Long delay, interminable pains?
Already irate, Fry realises he‟s left
his wallet on the plane after the
group had been bussed to the
transit lounge.

Luckily, Qantas‟ response team
managed to change Fry‟s irritation
to relief as he quickly recovered
his wallet.

He also tweeted a photograph of
their crisis-response flyer which
would undoubtedly get Qantas
some positive sentiment in
Twittersphere.

The Verdict: Breathe easier. But only slightly.

In this case, Qantas showed that
they do have the mettle to handle
crises.

They were speedy to respond to a
situation that came out of nowhere
and addressed most concerns
head-on.

The crisis-response flyer was a neat
ouch.

On Twitter, they tried their best to
get some positive publicity by being
pro-active.

Got a crisis of your own? Here‟s how you can
help yourself!


For more case-studies:

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How Qantas dealt with the 48-hour fleet grounding crisis and the A380 mid-air engine failure

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How Qantas dealt with the 48-hour fleet grounding crisis and the A380 mid-air engine failure