Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MPU Leadership Assignment 2
MPU Leadership Assignment 2
Case QZ8501
Air Asia Indonesia Flight QZ8501 was scheduled an international flight from Indonesia to Singapore
on 28 December 2014. It lost contact with the air traffic controllers immediately after the aircraft
operating the route was just over 40 minutes into its flight. 155 passengers and 7 crews on board was killed
after the aircraft crashed into the Java Sea. Tony Fernandes, the Air Asia CEO was stepped up to the plate to
deal with the situation. Air Asia conformed to using the Image Restoration Theory. Benoit (1995) brought a
rhetorical perspective of crisis communication to light by emphasizing that similarly, to individuals,
organizations enact image restoration attempts when they perceive that their reputation is being
threatened. As we know, reputation is an important issue if the organizations wanted to be perceived by
their stakeholders.
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There are five main categories in Image Restoration Theory: denial, evasion of responsibility,
corrective action reducing offensiveness and mortification. Air Asia adopted the reducing offensiveness and
mortification strategy.
With the reducing offensiveness strategy, they paid out compensation to minimize the level of
negative effect for those affected and unaffected. In addition, with the mortification strategy, Tony
Fernandes who said he would honor the airlines obligations has made a public apologize, I apologize
profusely for what they are going through. I am the leader of this company. I take responsibility. That is why
I am here. I am not running away from my obligations. The first thing that Tony Fernandes did was
responded quickly with real actions. He managed the crisis by tweeting that they would have a statement
soon using the Air Asias own twitter account, barely an hour after it happened. The tweet said, We will be
putting out another statement soon. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers, we must stay strong.
He was then on a flight to Surabaya three hours after the tweet, with clear intentions of what he
was doing. He was in the city to meet and comfort the passengers and crews families. He was available to
the media and made himself to become the focal point of the whole incident. He demonstrated his and the
organizations support and care towards those of whom were affected by the incident. He succeeded
because he responded with real and quick actions. He do not put the blame on anyone else and most
importantly he is sincere and transparent to public. All of which, Air Asia is very successful in their crisis
management strategies.
Case QZ8501
The very aptly responsible Chief executive of AirAsia - Tony Fernandes took the time out to personally touch base
with the affected families and parties, gathered his evenly dedicated employees, all while search and rescue teams did
all they could to recover victims and left no stone unturned for 2 days to locate Flight QZ8501. During an interview, he
was quoted saying, The passengers were on my aircraft and I have to take responsibility for that.
Fernandes response time was something very plausible as instantaneously after the relevant parties made an
announcement on debris that could very well be from the plane, he engaged the eager public through the social media
website Twitter and issued a very heartfelt and personal apology. "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families
involved in QZ8501," he wrote. "On behalf of AirAsia my condolences to all. Words cannot express how sorry I am."
Other than issuing an apology, the visibly affected Chief Executive had earlier used the same medium, Twitter, to
share that the incident was his worst nightmare and that his "heart bleeds" for the affected families of both the
passengers and crews. He also posted his sincere gratitude for their undying "support and love for AirAsia". I
apologize profusely for what they are going through. I am the leader of this company and I have to take responsibility,
Fernandes said at a televised news conference. Any form of leadership entails leaders openly accepting their
accountability for actions from their brand. The passengers were on my aircraft and I have to take responsibility for
that.
Following that, we soon came to see that Fernandes offline actions was definitely on par with his tweets for when in
personal contact with the families of the victims, he spoke to them in a very genuine and personal manner. He tweeted,
On my way to Surabaya where most of the passengers are from as with my Indonesian management. Providing
information as we get it. One of the most prominent examples he set was when he actually flew to Palembang as an
escort to a victims family who was a crew member.
Within merely hours of the tragedy unfolding, with the flight vanishing from radar after taking off from Surabaya in
Indonesia, he was already in the main city to hold meetings with the affected families of crews and passengers.
Simultaneously, AirAsia and their Indonesian team were issuing statements on the entire tragedy in real time in
multiple languages and had a hotline introduced for families perusal. The most lauded fact about AirAsia was how
amazing they were at communicating instantly with affected parties and going through every hole with detail and
precision. Everyone saw the amount of effort they made to ensure everything was transparent without reluctance to
withhold information that could be detrimental to their reputation. Instead, they provided all they could to the Indonesian
government to assist with the search and rescue mission. Mentioned elsewhere, however, in Ad Age, the Indonesians
havent been as secretive or defensive, or as hostile toward outside criticism as compared to Malaysias way of
handling their MH370 mission. When put together with Fernades quick thinking hands-on methods to the crisis from
the beginning of it, this has been impeccably important to Air Asias current position in the view of the world. Mr
Fernandes' extremely pro-active attitude shines in comparison with the unsure and poorly acted actions shown by
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya when MH370 went missing in March.
Mr Fernandes will definitely have no trouble with continuing his legacy of an amazing leadership he has shown from
the time he acquired the brand for RM1 way back then.
References
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