Last month's crash of Trans World Airlines [TWA] flight 800 gripped and horrified the world more than any other corporate disaster in a number of years. Placed under intense scrutiny by global media and state and federal officials, the airline needed to mount round-the-clock efforts to communicate with victims' families and friends, government investigators and the media.
From the time of the crash off the coast of Long Island, N.Y. on the evening of July 17, TWA was plunged into a non-stop process of confirming the passenger list, and then notifying family and friends of the 230 victims, explained Mark Abels, vice president, corporate communications at the St. Louis-based carrier. The airline immediately took over an entire hotel at Kennedy International Airport, where the flight originated, to house family and friends waiting for word of loved ones.
TWA also immediately deployed its 600-member trauma response team, composed of TWA volunteers from around the world. Team members served as personal escorts for victims' families, to take care of any needs they had, said Abels.
Was Passenger List Late?
The process of verifying the passenger list and notifying family took the airline 23 hours. This often involved tracking down families through travel agencies listed on ticket information, said Abels. The airline also established a toll-free telephone number for families to call and report passengers on the flight.
Responding to the charges by the media and politicians about the 23-hour delay in publicly releasing the passenger list, Abels said, "In fact, that was one of the quicker turnarounds of the last 10 years [for aviation disasters]." He said the passenger list verification was prompt, especially considering that a number of the families notified were in France and Italy.
After TWA released its passenger list, its role in media communication became secondary to that of the federal, state and county organizations running the recovery efforts and investigation of the crash. "The federal agencies are the investigators," said Abels. "They announce investigative findings --we do not do that."
Why did the media and some politicians bash TWA for its response to the crisis? We asked two veteran crisis counselors for their assessment.
"I thought they did a good job," said Bill Patterson, vice president/reputation management, Columbus, Ohio, PR firm HMS Partners. "The only negative thing was that they needed [to demonstrate] more compassion and sympathy from the top; and it needed to come quicker and last longer." Speaking generally of crisis response, Patterson said a top executive cannot publicly show his remorse enough.
Hal Warner, a crisis counselor at Capitoline/Manning, Selvage & Lee, Washington, D.C., agreed that TWA responded appropriately.
"I was not critical of what I have been reading [about the disaster]," said the former president of the Public Relations Society of America. (TWA, 314/589-3183; HMS Partners, 614/222-2555; Capitoline/Manning, Selvage & Lee, 202/467-3900)