SQ006 Crash

It has been almost 10 years already since the crash of SIA's SQ006 which have killed 82 people. The following year (2001), SIA was awarded second in the 2001 Skytrac Airline of the Year Award.

As predicted by Assif Shameen in online magazine Asiaweek.com, "Good crisis management and a fine reputation can save SIA."

Within hours, CEO Cheong Choong Kong was supervising a crisis-management strategy aimed at minimizing the damage to SIA's reputation. He flew to Taipei (he was from New Zealand for a business meeting) and personally met grieving relatives and a media hungry for answers — at least partially because an airline spokesman in Los Angeles had erroneously claimed in the hours just after the accident that there had been no fatalities.

"There is no point in concealing anything," he said. "They are our pilots. It was our aircraft. It should not have been on that runway. We fully accept our responsibility to our passengers, our crew and their families."
(URL: http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/magazine/2000/1117/biz.airlines.html)

Then the attention moved to providing compensation to the families of the victims. At first, SIA gave $25,000 to each family of the deceased for emergency expenses. Later it offered $400,000 to the kin. Other than that, SIA also offered reimbursement of the medical bills for the injured victims and gave them compensation based on the severity of their injuries. SIA buddies were also offered assistance to the grieving families.

All these are the works of SIA's internal PR and their crisis management which really impressed me. There are a few loopholes but nothing too big. One thing for sure, they made up for the mistakes very quickly and using the CEO as the public figure shows how much SIA was apologetic and compassionate towards the families of those involved in the flight.

I can only imagine the havoc going on in the PR office that week.

(Read before Week 9:
8. Reputation Management: A Driving Force for Action - Nigel De Bussy AND 10. An Issues–Crisis perspective- Gwyneth Howell)