The Qantas Files: Why the Miracle Landing was Perceived as a Disaster

Qantas needn’t have had caused such a fuss earlier this month after one of their aircrafts ran into engine troubles on a flight bound from Singapore to Sydney. If their Communications team had been onto it they could have stopped the online grapevine spiraling out of their control into the hands of social media junkies.

It started with one tweet from a guy on board with an accompanying picture that made it look as though there had or was going to be a crash. Inaccurate reports emerged alongside more tweets painting a very bad picture for the airline. Further to this, people on Batam (an island near Singapore) reported hearing an explosion and seeing smoke, and reports of people picking up debris only confirmed the faux story being sent around online.

What really happened, according to Qantas, was an A380 aircraft operating from Singapore to Sydney experienced an engine issue soon after takeoff and returned to Singapore. The aircraft had 440 passengers and 26 crew on board, and landed safely.

Thankfully, nobody was injured or hurt. Twitter’s role in this case was very interesting because people were essentially correcting the news cycle in real time. Here, Twitter helped set the facts straight and confirm their safety, but it also made it very difficult for families of passengers on board to know if they were alright as Qantas’ reply with an official statement was very delayed.

Add to that their Facebook and Twitter pages said nothing and offered absolutely no help whatsoever, frustrating tweeps and other online users hunting the story worldwide.

Some of the comments to this blog of the incident suggest that we consider the point of view of the airline – with partner Rolls Royce involved there is a major process involved before an official statement can be released. Reports are now saying that Rolls Royce will not meet their profit target for 2010 as a result of the debacle.

Moral of the story here: have appropriate online monitoring in place so that in the event something dramatic happens concerning your brand and the discussion is rife – your attention is alerted to it immediately. This is a prime example that you cannot ignore Twitter as the fastest spreading news outlet in the world – whether or not it is regulated as entirely accurate news is another story – I am simply saying that it is an unwieldy beast that your business needs at least a firm grip on.

An update over the weekend revealed the A380’s had engine modifications made by Rolls-Royce, just months before this disaster happened. Read the pilot’s version of the story, here.

Written by Jess Miller.