Public Relation and Crisis Communication: A Critical Evaluation of Southwest Airlines Crisis in 2016

Running head: PUBLIC RELATION AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
PUBLIC RELATION AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
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PUBLIC RELATION AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
Topic: A critical evaluation of managing a crisis situation in South West Airlines in 2016.
Introduction
Crisis management is one of the most important operation processes in the organisation
to mitigate the risk and to control the situation in an ethical manner. Public relation team needs to
take most of the responsibilities through the process and that impact over the operation of the
company in the right way to mitigate the process quickly. Public relations team has to intervene
with the issue and make some quick decisions to implement the situation, rather get rid of the
situation. There are many types of crisis and most of the times organisational potential damage or
stakeholders of the company are being threatened. The industry may be different but the amount
of threat will be there in the same way and that impact on the business in long-term cases. There
are three major threats that are related to the crisis management like public safety and security,
financial loss and reputation loss of the organisation. The situation impacts over the company in
a radical way, as disrupting operation and loss of market share, emergency cost barring,
employees’ harassment and unusual time management and sometimes loss of lives are the main
issue for the management.
In this case, crisis situation of Southwest Airlines has been described and also evaluated
is the situational problem faced by the airline. Public relation team had come upon that moment,
but the situation was so drastic that they cannot operate a single step to get rid of the situation.
Crisis management and their possible understanding evolved through the case and that
determines the business reduction situation for that company.
Identification of the crisis

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PUBLIC RELATION AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
The crisis situation has been found in 2016 when more than 1800 flights were cancelled
due to the crisis situation. The situation continued for three days and all the stakeholders' of
Southwest airlines were on the suffering side (Utz, Schultz and Glocka 2013). A technical glitch
happened and it persisted for three days long. The systematic worldwide cancellation had been
made by the executives of the company and passengers are not getting their flight on time.
Importance of social communication is so much important, as that helped understand the
situation. PR team were not working properly nor they did have any clue to contact with all the
passengers to inform about the situation, thus the work was challenging for them.
Description of the crisis
The situation faced by the Southwest airlines was drastic. At the time of fixing the
problem, concerned executive body was forced to cancel 700 flights on the initial day, after that
they tried to solve the solution, but after so many tough attempts the consequences were not good
and the crisis continued. The airlines operated 3,900 daily flights in a year but the situation was
so drastic that the company had not even moved their stagnant position and that is the reason
passengers were suffering, and so was the employees (Usatoday.com 2016). After that disastrous
day, on the next morning, 900 flights were cancelled again and the devastating situation had
continued. Most of the disruption situation had been faced by the passengers on the very next of
the situation. The day was Friday and officials of the Southwest executives declared on Thursday
that they would solve the issue and all the flights were going on their scheduled time but the
situation had been same for the day and customers had to miss their flight due to that incident.
Organisation called their passengers for the rebooking of flights, and thousands of people
gathered over there to take their tickets and the reservation line was enormous. This amount of
rush was first noticed by this airline company and that was supposed to be considered regarding

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PUBLIC RELATION AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
the crisis situation that happened in Southwest airlines (Usatoday.com 2016). Southwest also
provided tickets for their customers with no cost and as they have been asked to change their
plan as well. A full calculation of exploring the situation and the right way to mitigate the
situation did not happen in that case and that public relation team and managers were mere
spectators over there.
Overview of the crisis in different social media platforms
Social media had a big role in this incident. Through the social media, the news became
viral and people knew about the situation the company were in. In other section, all the social
networking sites were stopped and that is the reason people were unaware of timing and all the
information related to the file (Grunig 2013). The platform of social media helped to mitigate the
crisis as the situation occured in case of rendering huge portions of their computers that are
inoperable for more than 12 hours. The duration of the time is very big as the airlines needed
24hours service assistance in case of social media involvement and that is the reason Southwest
had faced this kind of situation.
Issues evolve through the crisis
The main issue in this matter is the massive technology failure that happened in
Southwest airlines. Service professional fear is always there in case of involving in crisis
situation. Through this crisis situation, the positional improvement does not happen and the same
situation is persisting for the Southwest airlines (Seitel 2017). The passengers are in the adverse
condition phase. The situation is not fruitful, and customers suffer the most in this situation. The
internal technological failure is the liable situation for this issue. In case of the crisis situation,
there are some evolving cases that have come and these impacted the business.