FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - 27 May BA IT outage miscellaneous discussions thread
Old May 28, 2017, 6:50 am
  #120  
Ber2dca
 
Join Date: May 2014
Location: DMV
Posts: 2,092
Originally Posted by RoyalSwazi
What has surprised me the most is that a B2C mega brand household name has done such a shabby job in the PR department. I used to work in a different part of the transportation business, however this was cargo. None of these were household names, however my first employer had a very public incident off Australia and my third another near another which also became a headline story in the U.K. Media. At all three companies I worked we had an emergency response team which included a named list of participants. Drills were held several times a year, and part of the drill was to send out regular press releases and make a spokesperson available to external parties (media, customers, families etc). For major incidents like this there would be press conferences. All employees were discouraged from speculating when contacted by third parties and refer everybody to the press contact, however the official communiques would contain a brief explanation of the incident and that we would come back with more information as it became available. I'd be surprised if BA have not held similar drills, but even if they haven't this is a massive fail on management's part.
Based on what I've seen this BA management team is entirely numbers-driven. These are guys who want to see "BA announces new record earnings this quarter" on the Sky News ticker in the morning more than anything. That's what gives them a kick, that's high fives territory.

The entire BA response appears to be shaped by "how do we save the fiscal metrics here?" rather than "how do we get the company to look fairly good here?".

Aside from the lack of a PR response yesterday, we've already seen refusal of reimbursement for alternative transport as well as signs pointing to blanket EU261 refusals.

I'm not saying they don't care at all about public perception, but it clearly takes a backseat to other considerations.
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