Crisis Management and Communication Report: Luton Airport Incident

This report examines crisis management and communication strategies in the context of a bomb threat at Luton Airport. It begins with an introduction to crisis management, emphasizing the importance of proactive measures. The main body distinguishes various types of crises, including malice, technological, natural, and deception, providing relevant examples. The report then focuses on the role of a PR manager in the given scenario, detailing immediate actions such as informing cyber agencies, assembling a crisis management team, and assessing the risks involved. These risks include potential hazards to passengers and infrastructure. The PR manager's action plan includes identifying hazards, determining who might be harmed, evaluating the risks, and implementing control measures such as evacuating the airport and coordinating with bomb squads. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of teamwork, patience, and effective communication in managing crises. The author emphasizes the need for ongoing assessment and the importance of the PR manager's oversight in ensuring the safety of everyone involved. The references include books, journals, and online resources related to crisis management and communication.

Crisis Management and
Communication

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Assessment 1...............................................................................................................................3
Distinguish various types of crises from each other...................................................................3
Assessment 2...............................................................................................................................4
Role of the PR manager into the given situation.........................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Crisis management is the process by which particular organisation deals with disruptive
and expected event that has threaten with the focal purpose to harm the business entities or its
connected persons (White, 2016). This assessment will be carried on situation when someone has
called the airport authorities of the Luton Airport that bomb is planted that will be detonated in 2
hours. So, this assessment will cover action plan and strategies where the PR manager of this
airport needs to take corrective steps to avoid such crisis or risk.
MAIN BODY
Assessment 1
Distinguish various types of crises from each other
Crisis situations has become increasingly difficult to avoid due to all the communication
means and the rapid spread of an information via the Internet mode. Basically, when it comes to
protect own business entity from the crisis situation, the best defence is the good offense
(Mericskay, 2013). In context with Luton Airport, there are different types of crisis such as Crisis
of Malice, crisis of technology, natural crisis along with the crisis of deception. The general
distinguish is as follow
Crisis of Malice: This happens when person or group of person opposed to your cause or
extreme tactics to tarnish the image or even attempt to bring down the business entities. Such
crisis involves acts that could tampering any product, equipment or software, Malicious rumours
or any acts related to terrorism.
Technological crisis: This occurs when the technology stops the business working and
starts to affect an actual ability or potential to serve to any person. Crisis such as Internet down,
machinery failure or any activities related to hacking comes under this category.
Natural crisis: These are some natural phenomenon which includes storms, hurricanes,
floods, earthquakes or any other acts of the nature (Coombs, 2014). It happens on the large scale
and risks to the human life. The best ways to prevent from the natural crisis is to pre-plan.
Crisis of deception: This crisis happens when an executives or any leader conceals or
might be they misrepresents factual information about his or her business entities. This can be

considered as nightmare depends on the extent of deception, but it is important for organisation
to work closely with its attorneys and consultants to manage the difficult situations.
Assessment 2
Role of the PR manager into the given situation
As the entire situation has discussed earlier that someone has called the Luton airport that
bomb is planted inside the airport premises and that will be detonated in 2 hours. As, this is the
critical situation, where PR manager needs to take the charge to identify whether any rumours is
their or in reality there is a bomb (Roche, 2017). In this scenario, I will take instant decision
without wastage of time by doing any long meeting. I will first inform cyber agencies to track the
call who have shared this crisis information. Apart from this, crisis management team will be
informed over this concern to access the risk which will be caused by bomb blast. I will access
the risk involve by taking care of following steps are as follows:
Identify the hazards: In context with Luton airport, I will decide the probability of the
hazards would be caused to passengers engaged into the airport. Hazards such as injury, damage
related to airport infrastructure or even death would be caused to the people engaged in the Luton
airport.
Decide who might be harmed and how: After the identification, it is necessary for me to
identify who will be harmed. In the Luton Airport, passengers, manpower or even infrastructure
of the airport such as building, aircraft etc. will be harmed. Hence, management needs to take the
on spot decision or action plan to avoid such incidence.
Evaluate the risk and decides the control measures: This stage deals with assessing the
level of risk involved an decide the what would be the control measures to avoid crisis. As the
PR manager, I was noticed that the level of risk is relatively very high, because, it would caused
major injury to people or even caused the death. I will take control measures such as inform the
people inside the airport to leave the airport through announcement or informed authorities to
take all the people to empty space such as nearer to major runway to avoid any casualties.
Record your findings and implement them: My findings are people inside the airport
premises will be taken to safest space such as ground level of the airport, call the bomb squad to
identify any kind of bomb planted or not, if have, then diffuse it along along with cyber agencies
will be informed to track the call received of threatening. This could be possible by the proper
collaboration of working with crisis management team and workforce of the Luton Airport. This

could be overcome by effective planning such as how we will take people to safe area to avoid
any misshapenness, who will take initiative to find the bomb until unless bomb squad would
reach.
Review the assessment: There is no need to do full assessment, because emergency squad
of Luton Airport are well-trained to handle such circumstances. Only thing is required to do is
manage people during the crisis removal process (Pro peck-Zimmermann, 2016).
I need to disclose that crisis team of Luton Airport are well-trained for such situation and
also with complete knowledge and action planning to avoid any misshapenness. As a PR
manager, it is my duty to overlook actions taken by crisis team over this entire issues, as I have
believe in them,, but it is my duty to take care of everyone inside of the Luton Airport.
There is the situation, what happen of bomb goes off, simply it would impact the Airport
infrastructure or aircraft's, which can cause huge damage to the business of the Airport (Palttala,
2012). Hence, for overcoming the big losses, I along with an authorities has taken steps or
actions in the past to avoid any loss to the business of Luton Airport.
It is important to identify what all sort of people which will affected, if bomb goes off.
Passengers, workforce both inside and outside off of the Airport premises, infrastructure will be
affected. It would cause casualties, business loss and future growth expectancy of the Luton
Airport (Pipek, 2012). In this situation, I as the PR manager will take steps to bring the people
outside off airport premises as soon as possible along with this I will call bomb squad to find the
bomb, if there is an explosive, diffuse it to remove uncertainties. The people who are outside of
the airport are equally in the safe zone. But, I need to take collective actions to protect the people
inside the airport premises by carrying them to the safe and secure places without them or
making excuse of the security reasons and others. Also, the crisis management team needs to
work in the collaboration to successfully remove any kind of damage and uncertainties. Before
the detonation of the bomb, its my primary duty to give priority to the people first to avoid any
kind of uncertainties to them by doing the risk assessment which is previously discussed.

CONCLUSION
From the above assessment, it is concluded that crisis management has been initiated
with the focal purpose to remove or dismantle any future happening crisis or risks. Removal of
crisis would be possible with the help of team work along with response of every person for the
common purpose (Reuter, 2014). It is necessary to have patience and calmness while executing
any actions plan for avoiding any kind of uncertainties or misshapenness from the crisis.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Johansen, W., Aggerholm, H. K. and Frandsen, F., 2012. Entering new territory: A study of
internal crisis management and crisis communication in organizations. Public
Relations Review. 38(2). pp.270-279.
Roche, S., Pro peck-Zimmermann, E. and Mericskay, B., 2013. Geo Web and crisis
management: Issues and perspectives of volunteered geographic information. Geo
Journal. 78(1). pp.21-40.
Coombs, W. T., 2014. Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.
Sage Publications.
White, C.M., 2016. Social media, crisis communication, and emergency management:
Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. CRC press.
Utz, S., Schultz, F. and Glocka, S., 2013. Crisis communication online: How medium, crisis type
and emotions affected public reactions in the Tsushima Chichi nuclear disaster. Public
Relations Review. 39(1). pp.40-46.
Palttala, P. and Vos, M., 2012. Quality indicators for crisis communication to support emergency
management by public authorities. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.
20(1). pp.39-51.
Reuter, C., Marx, A. and Pipek, V., 2012. Crisis management 2.0: Towards a systematization of
social software use in crisis situations. International Journal of Information Systems
for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM). 4(1). pp.1-16.
Online
Types of crisis, 2018. [Online]. Available through: <https://tuckerhall.com/resources/types-of-
crisis/>