Crouching Tiger, hidden spokesperson?

Tiger's media response is questionable at best (Photo:Fairfax)

Travel plans for thousands of Australian holiday makers were thrown into chaos on the first day of school holidays over the weekend as Tiger Airways was grounded by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

The grounding, on the basis of repeated safety breaches, is pretty much the biggest crisis an airline could face outside of an actual crash. Yet the crisis management response from Tiger seems to be at best in the same mould as their discount flight model – basic. 

In my opinion the crisis management has been more like their safety procedures – inept and dangerous.

Three days on since the announcement by CASA, Tiger Airways have not hosted one single media conference. Their CEO, Tony Davis, has conducted a minimal number of interview by telephone and he has remained based overseas. Local managing director, Crawford Rix, based in Melbourne, has also remained silent and ‘could not be contacted’ by media seeking comment.

In my role as Public Affairs Manager last week I had a number of issues breaking at the same time. Now while certainly not of the Tiger scope, they involved people’s lives, health and in one case, death. I took the approach that I have always maintained during a pressure time: put your hand up when done wrong and state the facts and clear the record when allegations are false.

Credibility and reputations are a two way street – you can’t only be available to talk when the going is good and pretend the media don’t exist if they say nasty things about you. I’ve always found that through honesty, it means when you tell the media something is inaccurate or downright wrong, they are quicker to respond to correct it, or at least let you get your side out there.

In my opinion, Tiger Airways may need to relaunch itself as Ostrich Airways – because the longer they keep this head in the sand approach to crisis communications the higher the chance they will remain flightless.

Thoughts? Are Tiger better to stay quiet on the situation for fear that any comment will make the matter worse or should they come out and explain what actions they are taken?

JH