Sia Analysis

Singapore Airlines

When large-scale crisis like the one of flight SQ006 happens, it makes all of us acutely aware of our vulnerabilities to crisis. This is one of the reasons why such crises are subject of strong media interest worldwide, and pose a severe test for the airline and its management, so how well did Singapore Airlines (SIA) respond to the Crisis of SQ006?

How SIA responded to the incident is summarized in Appendix 1. (Ray 1999). It can be said that in the first stage of the reaction to the crisis, SIA did avoid questions about responsibilities, this can be seen in exhibit 3 where the chairman of SIA states; "My personal feeling is that it was an accident", in other words the first statement from the company does not say anything about responsibilities.

The second day after the incident the primary cause of the incident was confirmed and SIA accepted the findings and accept responsibilities, as can be seen in exhibit 2 - news release 13; "We accept this finding... we fully accept our responsibility to our passengers, our crew and their families" Many argues that this is a strategy in crisis management, to avoid further damage to the company; in terms of public arguments about blame.

After the acceptance of blame and responsibility had been established, the Airline sought to make amends, with expression of distress, sorrow and regret. The way they did this was by; minutes of silence, half-mast flags, memorial service in Taipei, company representative's presence at funerals, halted advertising, transportation to crash site, the buddy system, and immediate money compensation to victims and next-of-kin. Reassurance were then given by SIA in the words of deputy chairman as seen in exhibit 2 - news release 13; "Once the answers are established, we will take whatever action is necessary to ensure that this tragic accident doesn't happen again. There are lessons to be learned - we need to understand what they are" The last stage in the process presented in appendix 1 is looking ahead, and SIA did this as they moved into the new situation of post-crisis communications.

Though it seems that SIA had some sort of plan when it comes to crisis management, they still experienced some criticism amongst the next-of-kin. This can be seen in exhibit 3 - 2 November when a person managed to interrupt