Strategic Analysis of Qantas Airlines: PR and Communication Strategies

This report provides a strategic analysis of Qantas Airlines, the largest airline in Australia, focusing on its public relations and communication challenges. It examines several incidents that negatively impacted Qantas's public perception, including engine failures, a controversial social media post, and labor disputes. The analysis includes an overview of the events and their consequences, such as the grounding of aircraft and public outcry. The report proposes several strategies to improve Qantas's public image, including public-private partnerships, the inclusion of activists on advisory boards, and improved internal communications. Furthermore, the report provides a communication plan template with details on timing, audience, key messages, and desired outcomes. It emphasizes the importance of social media strategies and offers insights into identifying goals, target audiences, and the organization's social media approach. The report concludes with recommendations for Qantas to restore its positive public perception through enhanced public relations efforts.

Strategic Analysis of Qantas Airlines 1
Strategic Analysis of Qantas Airlines
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Strategic Analysis of Qantas Airlines
Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services (Qantas) limited is Australia's
number one and largest airlines which has a market share of about sixty-five percent. This
airline based out of Sydney dominates the Australian domestic market and the government
decided to privatise it in the year 1992 in order to manage it better. In this paper, we aim to
strategically analyse the problems facing the airline majorly in the public relations and try to
create an effective strategy for the Qantas management to implement.
In the recent year, Qantas has faced numerous problems which have negatively
affected its public perception. One of the events includes its aircraft engines problems. In the
year 2010 one of its planes, Boeing 747, had an explosion in engine number four shortly
after take-off from San Francisco headed to Sydney. This prompted the pilots to turn around
the plane and dumped fuel over the Pacific Ocean as a safety feature and successfully landed
the plane back in San Francisco. In the same year, Qantas Boeing 747 experienced engine
problems and was forced to take an emergency landing back to Singapore after a similar
problem of the engine explosion. On November 5 the same year, Airbus A380s made an
emergency landing in Singapore shortly after take-off when it developed engine problems.
These series of events made the management to ground all of their six Airbus A380s in order
to perform a safety check. This interfered with the company's celebration of its 90th
anniversary.
The company had suffered a negative publicity when it posted a controversial picture
which was interpreted by the public as being racist. This led the company to pull down the
post and made apologies to the public but it was too late since the damage had already been
caused. Another problem was that the company had grounded its fleet of aircraft after it
developed problems with three company unions. This affected many of its customers globally
and the government intervened in order to resolve the issue. The other problem that faced the

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company is that of a Twitter hashtag that was created to create a competition that the winner
was to win 50 pairs of Qantas first-class pyjamas and a luxury amenity kit. This, however,
resulted in public outcry as the public used the same hashtag to express their frustrations with
the company.
Following these series of events Qantas, there are several actions that the company
need to undertake in order to restore back their positive public perception. One of the
strategies is to have a public-private partnership. This will ensure clients and suppliers partner
together and rewards are given according to performance. In the case where the company had
problems with its company unions, this strategy could have helped greatly whereby both
parties could have come to an agreement and avoid grounding of the company's fleet of
aircraft. Rewards motivate the workers thus provide better services to the public.
Having activists in the company's organizational advisory boards will help the
company to discuss and negotiate difficult issues. The issue of posting a controversial picture
could have been prevented since many activists could have advised the company of the
dangers posed by the picture. People have many rights and the company's employees may not
be conversant with all of them hence activists offer help and guidance to them.
Having internal communications helps to build and maintain relationships amongst
employees. This employer-employee relationship results in minimal errors during work,
higher productivity and less work absenteeism. The problem of the company with its
company union may have resulted due to lack of enough internal communications in order to
address issues affecting the company union officers. Inadequate communication leads to
many issues amongst employees arising and many organisations need to take into
consideration into having proper internal communications.
There are various factors that organizations should consider before posting anything
on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They include;

Strategic Analysis of Qantas Airlines 4
Identifying the goal of the message
Any message on social media should have a specific goal that reflects the company's
mission. These messages should have goals of increasing the brand awareness, creating a
positive public perception and convincing customers to buy products or services, (Doorley
and Garcia, 2015). Each message should be posted on a specific social media platform that
will be most effective in achieving the message goal and meeting the target group.
Identifying the target audience
Every social media message need to be targeted and after the right audience is
identified, it is important to examine what they post on social media, their interests, attitudes
and beliefs, (Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom , 2015 pp 60). The message should not be
exaggerated so as to have their attention since what you think is appealing could not be
appealing to other people. For one to have the target audience, one requires to do a good
analysis of the audience since you may post the right message but the message may be
irrelevant to the target audience.
Identifying organization's social media approach
Organization strategies should be reflected by the communication choices selected.
There are four ways in which organizations employ on social media, (Wright and Hinson,
2015 pp 10).
Predictive practitioner – this uses a lot of caution when posting any message on social media
so as to portray the intended goal of the message on social media.
Creative experimenter – in this approach, uncertainty is accepted and its main goal is to learn
from interactions with the audiences and know where to improve their businesses.
Social media champion – this is a more advanced approach and a team is created to foresee
the organization's social media platforms.

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Social media transformer: similar to social media champion but targets both internal and
external audiences by initiation of large-scale projects.
COMMUNICATION PLAN TEMPLATE
TIMING It should be between 6 in the morning to
around mid-night when people are busy on
social media platforms
AUDIENCE The public through social media platforms
like Facebook, twitter and instagram
SENDER a team of around 100 members
KEY MESSAGE messages with the organizations main goals
DESIRED OUTCOME public satisfaction
MEDIUM Facebook, twitter and instagram
MATERIALS irrelevant messages that could cause public
outcry
FREQUENCY – Not more than three times in a day in each
social media platform
In conclusion, Qantas need to improve their public relations department in order to
restore their public perception of being the best airliner in Australia and around the world.
Issues discussed in this paper would be of great importance to the organization if they are
employed in the company’s management.

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Bibliography
Doorley, J. and Garcia, H.F., 2015. Reputation management: The key to successful
public relations and corporate communication. Routledge.
Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P. and Beukeboom, C.J., 2015. A stage to engage: Social
media use and corporate reputation. Tourism Management, 47, pp.58-67.
Wright, D.K. and Hinson, M.D., 2015. Examining social and emerging media use in
public relations practice: A ten-year longitudinal analysis. Public relations journal, 9(2),
pp.1-26.