5 lessons learned from Malaysia Airlines’ crisis response

The mystery of Malaysia Airlines MH370 will continue for days, weeks and months.

The tragic loss of lives should be the biggest concern of everyone. But as a community of communicators and public relations professions, we’ve watched the crisis communications challenges fueled by non-stop media speculation.

Media even speculated about the harshness of a text message notification to family members, without any effort to verifying that the airline had, in fact, conducted a large number of personal meetings and personal phone calls to family members prior to sending a text message to those who could not be reached through meetings and phone calls.

The hoopla about the text message created enough of a crisis challenge on its own that the airline had to post a statement to its website explaining that the text was done only after other means of communications were used.

Ask any expert in global crisis communications how the airline should be communicating during its crisis and you will get varied opinions.