GERMANWINGS’ CRISIS COMMUNICATION REVIEWED

On March 24, 2015 a Germanwings airbus carrying 150 people, crashed en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. The plane shattered in a remote area of the French Alps. No one survived. Read more about the tragedy here.

Such a crisis fundamentally disrupts an organization’s daily work and asks for adequate reaction in order to minimize reputational threat and societal harm. How did Germanwings handle their crisis?How would academic public relations researchers evaluate Germanwings responses? Find out bellow!

FIRST PHASE

Through reconstruction of the black box, today we know that the plane crashed at 10.40am. The first corporate messages Germanwings published were the following tweets:

INFO: We have recently become aware of media reports speculating on an incident though we still do not have any own confirmed information...

— Eurowings (@eurowings) 24. März 2015

... As soon as definite information is available, we shall inform the media immediately ...

— Eurowings (@eurowings) 24. März 2015

... Please monitor our website http://t.co/5mVrxAZ08K for periodic updates.

— Eurowings (@eurowings) 24. März 2015

Germanwings first reaction to the crisis event was in line with academics’ recommendations. They responded promptly to speculations and they did so on Twitter. Study shows that facing a crisis event people first consult people based media such as Twitter to get information about the issue. Further, Germanwings accepted the uncertainty they were dealing with. According to academics, admitting to the uncertainty and ambiguity is superior to giving information that needs to be revised at a later point due to new information. Revision may decrease credibility and trust.

SECOND PHASE

The second phase was less praiseworthy. After the first three tweets Germanwings got mute. Redirecting people to the corporate website for information updates (see third tweet) lead the website to go down. In addition, while other news media constantly published updates about the crash, Germanwings second response was published more than 90 minutes after the crash and it was only a retweeted statement by their parent company Lufthansa. This proceeding is highly suboptimal. During an acute crisis situation it is crucial to remain accessible and meet the needs of the media. Further, academics strongly advise to communicate with honesty and openness. So even a short tweet saying “Our crisis team is currently talking to French authorities” would have been recommended.

THIRD PHASE

While confirmation about the crash already spread all over the news media, Germanwings did not improve their communication during the third phase. Way after gaining the sad certainty that the plane crashed, Germanwings tweeted the following statement:

UPDATE: Wir müssen leider bestätigen, dass Flug 4U9525 auf dem Flug von BCN nach DUS über den französischen Alpen verunglückt ist ...

— Eurowings (@eurowings) 24. März 2015

Unfortunately they published the statement only in German and it took them 3.5 hours to tweet the same statement in English while other news media already reported that the co-pilot crashed the plane intentionally. In this short statement they missed to express emotions such as empathy and regret. Such emotions have been proven to diminish reputational risk. Lufthansa’s tweets serve as a good example how to demonstrate such emotions. Read them here and here.

CONCLUSION

In summary, Germanwings handled their acute crisis communication poorly. Most importantly, they failed to update their news channels in a timely manner and missed out on expressing emotions arising from this tragedy. This short analysis makes it seem as if Germanwings did not have an elaborated crisis plan at hand, which is surprising regarding size and sector of the company.

This evaluation is based on the initial responses evoked by the crisis event and does not include the crisis management of the days following the crash. Do you have any thoughts or interesting examples about how Germanwings handled the crisis during the days following the catastrophic event? Let us know and comment below.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

VERA SPRING

Vera Spring is a corporate communication graduate student at the University of Amsterdam with a background in banking and psychology. She has a keen interest in public relations practice and the endless possibilities the avenue of social media has to offer.