Paul Dixon’s PR blog

‘The world’s favourite airline’ is experiencing a turbulent week.

First it was announced that BA is now the worst performing of all Europe’s major airlines, then a few days later it was hit with a £270 million fine for price fixing with Virgin. And today – just when they thought the nosedive was over and a spin had been averted – the Times (London) reports that BA attempted to conceal how many bags it was losing after discovering that it had come bottom of an industry league table. BA obviously doesn’t like to spin in the air – or with the media on the ground it seems.

BA, keeping its customers in the dark

Embarrassed by the findings, BA contacted the air passenger watchdog, the Association of European Airlines (AEA), and ordered it not to release the results of its quarterly survey of baggage delays and punctuality. In other words: stop the usual practice of issuing a press release to announce survey results. But that wasn’t enough for BA. They also wanted the figures to be placed on an obscure part of the AEA website, where they would be difficult to find. The AEA were outraged and neither of these requests got off the ground.

BA‘s first mistake was its attempt to cover-up negative news – sometimes it works, but there is always the threat that it will fly back right at you only to crash and burn into a smouldering wreck – it isn’t that bad for BA, but it is bad.  

The second mistake is even more school-boyish for a company which no doubt spends millions on its PR efforts worldwide: Denial. When contacted (by the Times I assume) a BA spokesperson said: “It’s got nothing to do with us whatsoever.” It later admitted that it had made a complaint to the AEA and stated that fellow member airlines had failed to report how many bags they had lost. Maybe this reminds my mother of when I was a baby, throwing my toy planes out of my pram – not the kind of memories a multi-billion pound airline should be evoking.  

So what should have been the appropriate response from the ‘world’s favourite airline’? First, BA should have recognised the report with a hint of concern yet focusing on the positives – releasing a statement along the lines of:  

British Airways is constantly striving to improve baggage services for our customers. We accept that there are areas for improvement; the reason why we take part in these kinds of surveys is because we are firmly committed to making our services for our valued customers even better.

And even better still, giving the media some actual examples of what exactly they are doing on the ground to improve the situation could have been included in the statement – turning negatives into positives is the only way to fly in this case.  

Instead, it was BA’s competitors who semi-cruised through a potentially turbulent week with the media. A spokesman for Lufthansa, another senior AEA member, said: “We would never seek to hide these figures. We accept that sometimes we will be seen to do badly but you can’t always have the sunny side of life.” The PR Herr’s and Frau’s at Lufthansa are no doubt nursing hangovers this Saturday morning after drinking a few too many Doppelbock’s in celebration. It’s a result from a bad day.  

We of course don’t know why BA behaved so amateur in dealing with this report – if any of its PR gurus read this they would learn nothing new. It’s actually PR common sense for anyone working in communications. This makes me wonder if the big-wigs at BA really understand that PR isn’t just about allocating it a budget. You need to listen to what the communication guys are saying, if you don’t, the potential consequences are disastrous. 

I guess the calls of “Cover-ups don’t fly!” got lost somewhere in between economy and first-class. Maybe it’s time BA top-brass bumped the PR guys up – that’s if they don’t want their half-eaten prawn sandwiches polishing their shoes as they nosedive into yet another crisis.