Crisis Communication Plan for Malaysia Airlines MH370 Flight

MASS COMMUNICATION
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Table of Contents
Section A – The Crisis.................................................................................................................................3
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................3
Elaborations and Impact of the Crisis......................................................................................................3
Section B – The Crisis Communication Plan...............................................................................................4
Introductory Statements...........................................................................................................................4
Documentation........................................................................................................................................5
Emergency Operation Centre...................................................................................................................5
The Core Crisis Management Team........................................................................................................5
Team Member Responsibilities...............................................................................................................6
Team Resource Requirements.................................................................................................................6
Crisis Procedures.....................................................................................................................................7
Spokesperson...........................................................................................................................................7
Communications Protocols......................................................................................................................8
Stakeholders............................................................................................................................................9
Summary.................................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................10
References.................................................................................................................................................11

Section A – The Crisis
Introduction
A passenger plane MH370 of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) went missing in 8th March in the year
2014 after the Air Traffic Controller of Malaysia handover to the Air Traffic Controller of
Vietnam. The plane has total 239 peoples, 227 passengers, and 12 crew members. The satellites
and radar communication was examined and found that the plane had flown back through the
Malaysian Peninsula and then towards the southern Indian Ocean. The air and sea were
thoroughly searched but the flight was still not found. The paper is about the crisis of MH370
flight of MAS along with its elaboration and effect on the MAS. It will also present a crisis
communication plan related to the crisis.
Elaborations and Impact of the Crisis
It might be unfair to discuss the tragically related crises which have been suffered by Malaysia
Airlines (MAS). The different events have made customers raise concerns regarding one of the
main airline's companies in Malaysia. The MH370 flight of Malaysia Airlines had disappeared in
the month of March 8thn of the year 2014, which was carrying almost 227 passengers and 12
crew members. The plane is still not found (Changsong and Ahmad, 2018). After the incident of
MH370, Malaysia Airlines was heavily condemned for their crisis communication.
The deepest consolation by the authorities of Malaysia was badly responded by the passengers
due to a number of reasons, and not to talk about their interactions with the affected relatives.
The reaction of the relatives is an important part of the PR support, at the time of providing a
response to the incidents. It has to be controlled with prompt, care and sympathy. There is
always a need for more than the interactions response. The relatives were informed about the
incident 16 days after the disappearance of the plane and that too through text messages which
were negatively responded by the relatives. Though the medium of communication was modern
the interactions were perceived by the relatives as casual, detached and wrong. It is to be noted
that it was an exceptional case for Malaysia Airlines, as because the plane is still not discovered
and there were no subsequent data about the plane.
Malaysia Airlines has faced one of the most vital issues from the perspective of communication.
The chief operating officer of Regester Larkin Tim Johnson has said that most of the factors of

communication response were best from the airlines' side. It had set up regular media
conferences and published the news statements regularly, given the brief idea to the relatives as
well as the media and presented a willingness to get involved. But, these consequent events were
heavily condemned by lots of stakeholders more for their content than their performance. Some
of them had also criticized the spokesperson’s performance. The Malaysia Airlines’ strategy to
seek the media attention was also condemned by some other peoples.
Mr. Johnson has believed that these condemnations do not minimize the significance of early,
fast and regular interactions. Rather, they had posed questions regarding the preciseness of
Malaysia Airlines' involvement with the stakeholders, when there is no change in the working
procedures or when there is limited data available. To solve the issues of their working
procedures, the utilization of third parties for the expectations management could be one of the
options. Another option is to imagine an idea about the events and the operations of the Malaysia
Airlines so that the main stakeholders could completely understand the range of the crisis and
know the steps taken by the frontline services. Although this would not solve the issues of lack
of new data but could at least show that Malaysia Airlines is trying to solve the circumstances as
efficiently and as fast as possible.
Another complicated aspect in the side of Malaysia Airlines was the engagement of the
Malaysian government, which further confirmed that it never efficiently incorporated the crisis
response (Mukherjee, 2014). There was confusion in the interactions and the credibility was lost
by the Malaysia Airlines. Malaysia Airlines have to work more on their working procedure at
the time of crises so that the passengers are assured to travel safely in the planes of the Malaysia
Airlines.
Section B – The Crisis Communication Plan
Introductory Statements
The communication plan will present the basic outline of the crisis communication plan.
Malaysia Airlines have to adjust and add some of their personal information, in order to
implement it for the crisis. It is just a list of options which needs to be considered by the
Malaysia Airlines for the crisis to provide help. A crisis is any circumstance which poses threats
to the reputation of the Malaysia Airlines, generally carried by the negative attention of the
media (Freeman et al., 2017). In this case, the crisis is the disappearance of the MH370 flight of