British Airways Social Media Crisis

In May of 2017 British Airways experienced a major IT system failure, causing the airline to cancel all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick airports for the day. Even though Heathrow and Gatwick are only two airports, the cancellation of the flights leaving from these airports effects travel and operations worldwide. The airline quickly posted a video on Twitter of the airlines Chairman and CEO explaining the issues that occurred. The video was the right response in handling the crisis because it was released timley and suggested total transparency with customers and clients. Even though the video was meant to cool off the situation, it only got hotter. For disgruntled passengers, this wasn’t enough. Many upset customers complained online about the little information they were receiving about the situation. One customer tweeted, “Speaking as someone who was at Heathrow all morning, people aren’t annoyed at the IT failure. They’re annoyed about being kept in the dark.”

This social media crisis was caused by British Airway’s simple reaction to the situation. While the company did respond to the situation on the same day it occurred, a better approach would have been keeping passengers up-to-date on all things that were happening as they started happening.

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