At the beginning of November, news that an engine had blown on a Qantas Airbus A380 flight from Singapore just minutes after take-off triggered a dismal month for the engine maker, Rolls Royce. In the past few weeks, we monitored over 5,000 mentions of the social discussion around Rolls Royce, its failed Trent 900 engine and the damage to its reputation.
We also picked up an interesting secondary discussion on the way Qantas managed the crisis in the first few hours of the disaster. Passengers on the Qantas flight immediately tweeted news of the emergency landing. So, for the airline, what was the role of social media in communicationg what had actually happened?
Figure 1: Sentiment expressed towards Rolls Royce in the discussion around engine failure – 25/10 to 23/11
Looking at the Rolls Royce discussion, there were three, unsurprising stand-out peaks in negative sentiment. The first spike on 5 November was driven by speculation on Twitter that an engine design flaw by Rolls Royce caused the Qantas plane to make an emergency landing.
The second peak on 8 November was driven by confirmation from the Australian airline that it had found anomalies on three additional engines across its fleet – heaping more woes on Rolls Royce.
The biggest spike was on 12 November when the company confirmed that it had identified the component that caused the engine blowout and also said that the issue could hit profit growth.
The engine makers’ reputation was damaged. But, throughout the period, Rolls Royce was assertive in communicating the action it was taking on engine safety as momentum around the crisis grew on all channels.
What about Qantas? On 4 November, Crisisblogger posted: ‘Oh boy, this is what we in crisis communication in the age of citizen journalists and instant social media have been talking about’.
The blogger acknowledged the airline got many things right when news broke but was critical of the fact it did not make a response on Twitter where it could have responded to early rumours and reports – ‘for the news media tuning in to Twitter for the latest updates, Qantas should have been there’. Nor did it use other channels such as Facebook or communicate through their website ‘at least they would have been part of the stream’. But, none of this would not damage its reputation.
A reply to the post by J.D. pointed out Quantas may not have had ‘verifiable information to share at the same pace that the passengers were tweeting/posting’ and the number one priority was the safety of its passengers.
This was supported by another comment: ‘JD – I agree. While Twitter is critical; there are so many moving parts in a crisis that need to be considered that pulling a trigger too soon can have dangerous or unintended consequences’.
What are your thoughts on how companies should use social media to communicate or respond to a major news story?