3. MH370


MH370 is another excellent case study in how reputation management, social media and crisis communication all intersect with one another.


Aſter the tragic events of March 8th 2014, Malaysian Airlines put their crisis communications plans into practice. From the outset this was fraught with issues, such as social media channels lagging hours behind press releases from search authorities, putting the airline on a constant back-footing.


Malaysian also used their existing Mass Notification System, previously used for things like flight notifications, to deliver bereavement messages about family members on board flights. This impersonal and robotic approach to incident management and customer relations was, understandably, viewed with outrage by both the family members of the victims as well as the press at large.1


Worse, social media was used to disseminate passenger logs that were either out of date or incorrect. Leading to mass confusion among family members, these sorts of mistakes were commonplace and many believe that they played a role in breaking down the relationship between Malaysian Airlines and the family members.2


The subject of this frayed, angry and oſten conspiratorial relationship has been covered extensively in the press and gives one a full idea of just how damaging poor crisis communication strategy can be in the social media age. It has also been a source of near unending woe for the airline financially, which has had to lay off some 6,000 employees as a result of a series of recurrent tragedies.


1 The triumph of the peanut gallery: MH370 and the search for answers, Jeff Wise, The Kernel. 2 MH370 - Three years of crisis communication lessons, Chartered Institute of Public Relations, March 8th 2017.


Page 7 | Emergency Communication Systems in the Mobile Age


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