Welcome And Hot Take Setup

Tom Mueller 0:06

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On this podcast, we share stories from the front lines of crisis management through interviews, storytelling, and lessons learned. As shared by experienced crisis leaders, I'm Tom Mueller. Thank you for being with us again today. We love it when you join us, and please tell your friends and colleagues about us as well. If you'd like to drop an email to the show, you can drop me a line at Tom at LeadingInAcrisis.com. And I certainly look forward to hearing from you. On our show today, we're going to do a quick hot take on the communications around the Air Canada and Jazz Airlines plane crash that happened at LaGuardia Airport in New York on March 22nd. So as we're recording now, that's about 36 hours ago. So we've had a time to do a quick snapshot of statements that were issued, CEO comments, videos that were done. And my special guest to help walk through the communications around this is Lee Carriher. Now, Lee is president of Double Forte PR, which is a national PR firm here in America with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Wisconsin. So Lee is a veteran crisis manager and brand manager who's going to offer some of her thoughts on the communications around the incident there. Lee, welcome to the show.

Lee Caraher 1:40

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Tom Mueller 1:43

And I didn't mention it yet, but Lee is a published author, has two management books to her name. And we're going to talk to her about those on our next episode of the podcast.

Lee Caraher 1:54

So I'm never leaving, apparently.

Crash Facts And Immediate Risks

Why Crisis Plans Must Run 24/7

Tom Mueller 1:58

So please come back for that one. All right. And yeah, Lee, I got a lot of questions for you about writing books and all that stuff. But let's just let's take a look at crisis response here for just a few minutes. For those of you who may not know, uh, this crash, this plane crash occurred on uh I said March 22nd, happened about 11.40 p.m. at LaGuardia. And this was a regional jet that was landing on the uh at the airport when a firetruck crossed the runway. And the plane unfortunately collided with that fire truck, um, doing horrific damage to both vehicles. But uh both pilots were killed on the aircraft. 41 other passengers and crew were taken to hospital with various injuries, um, which I guess in in hindsight, it's sort of a miracle that there weren't more fatalities associated with this. And there's lots of um video and photos online you can see uh and check. Um but it kind of reiterates, you know, this didn't happen at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. This happened at 11:40 p.m. on a Monday night, which means your crisis plan has to be 24-hour ready to go. And you're not gonna get a call at nine in the morning. You're gonna get a call at one in the morning and need to get you mobilized, get your plans going. And so that just speaks to the need to be ready. Lee, do you think most companies are ready for this type of a call out in the middle of the night?

Lee Caraher 3:41

Uh no. Well, I think that uh there are certain industries where you are you have a plan because it's required. I mean, for air, this is what's sort of uh strange about this situation is that in general, um, airlines are required to have this done and they have to go through, you know, different airports require different uh training and all that kind of stuff. So um I think what is one, in general, people are not co they're not ready. They're not ready for a crisis, and they haven't thought about all the different kinds of crisis that they could get hit with. So um, and you know, when I started my firm, I actually did I purposely said I wasn't gonna do crisis because crisis doesn't happen at Monday at night. Crisis happens around four o'clock on Friday or 1040 or 11:40 on a Sunday night. You know, that doesn't happen on the regular schedule. And in the end, we actually, you know, then Twitter happened and then we all everyone does crisis night. You can't not do crisis. So the first piece on this is you have to be prepared. Um, and you can see how in this in the rollout of how our Canada handled the situation, uh, you can see that they were prepared um because they had all the pieces ready to roll. You know, that wasn't they didn't absolutely have some of the pieces. The timing is very if the timing is terrible. Um, and I think I think it was probably complicated by the fact that it was actually a jazz airlines company that was operating as Air Canada. And I I assume there are rules on that because that doesn't make any sense.

Tom Mueller 5:16

Let me just set that up for our listeners and we'll jump into that real quickly because uh it's not an uncommon ownership issue here in uh or with airlines that you have a wholly uh separate company that's operating a regional airline that is not owned or operated by like Air Canada in this case. So Jazz Airlines, completely separate company, owned by a publicly traded company, and yet they carry the Air Canada brand on every aircraft they fly. So your plans have to be linked very closely.

Timing Beats Perfect Facts In Crisis

Lee Caraher 5:53

Um, but anyway, that's not unusual, but it does add a level of complexity to the ownership is unusual, but you know, the fact that they weren't it does it it looks like someone was missing or uh they didn't have the coordinated plan because it was clear that Air Canada have its pieces, right? I mean, uh the timing on this is 11 40 a.m. No, I'm sorry, 1140 p.m. on Sunday night, and then it's 2 45 a.m. on Monday morning until they've actually Air Canada posted. Air Canada, which has the brand on the side of the plane that was in all the photos, three hours of photos with the Air Canada on the, you know, done. Of course, it's in the middle of the night, but it doesn't really matter because news, news is news, and an air crash with a fatality is always news. So that's three hours and five minutes, which is an eternity in a crisis, and it's really an eternity in a crisis with a fatality. Because you can have crisis without fatality, it's still crisis, but a crisis with a fatality just is even it's just crisis to the X kind of thing.

Tom Mueller 6:57

So you're a big believer in the golden hour then of getting a statement out within an hour, half an hour.

Lee Caraher 7:02

I mean, I think half for you know, if you're in this business, so if you're in the air traffic, if you're in the flights, if you're in the gas business, I mean, there's some businesses that are just you know, you just things are gonna happen and it's gonna be bad. Then um, I think today, because everyone has a phone and um, you know, we have everyone has their own phone and they're get, you know, there's gonna be social media always before a company can respond. So you just have to give that up. Just know that there's gonna be social media about a crisis, probably this kind of crisis where it's visible, before you can react. But that you don't really have an hour anymore. You really, you know, 15 to 30 minutes is sort of the they got there on time, they were ready, somebody made a phone call, uh, and and there was a chain, right? And the right person, you know, went into the uh crisis file and pulled out the template, and then they updated the template to the situation and they sent it out. Right. And when you are prepared that way, and it requires you to have redundancy and it requires all the things, but these kind of companies, they were clearly prepared. I mean the half an hour, half an hour. Yeah, the fact there was three hours and five minutes, and the fact what they actually posted was we're aware of the situation, not like what they should have posted.

Tom Mueller 8:22

No, but that speaks to the midnight call out, probably, right? Hey, let's get the lawyer. Wait, we can't get the lawyer on the phone, he's not picking up.

Lee Caraher 8:30

Wait, uh well, and that's why you can't you have to have those vetted by legal before you you you know, this is where PR and comms always fights with legal, always. Yep, it's like, no, you're not gonna change a statement. Everyone knows do we want to take control? So you you do need to have those legally approved um uh state, you know, statements that are in the can, ready to be updated, like fill in the blanks. That um if you don't get legal and have that contingency, we're gonna call Bob. Bob's the lawyer. If Bob doesn't call back within 10 minutes, it can go. Because you're gonna have you know, in any kind of crisis, you're gonna have plenty of time to add on, right?

Tom Mueller 9:14

That's right.

Lee Caraher 9:15

And the key on this is you don't a lot of companies make the mistake. I don't want to um do anything until I know all the facts. They make that mistake all the time, right? But that's you're never gonna know all the facts, right? You just aren't. So it's better to say we're aware of it um and we're on it. It looks um, and we don't know much, we're getting all the information, and as soon as we have no more, we'll get back to you. Well, and even when you can't do anything.

Tom Mueller 9:44

The statements that I've included in in planning and crisis plans, they're designed to be pulled out and used, right? You don't even need to update. It just that awareness. And I think we saw that in the first statements that came out from Jazz uh Airlines. It was just basically an acknowledgement. Hey, we're aware there's an incident. More information uh we'll need to.

Lee Caraher 10:07

Here's the phone number. Well, I think that the Air Canada added that really quickly, right? So I mean, I think they had the statements, they just didn't have the protocol on timing, and there clearly was some breakdown between the two companies.

Tom Mueller 10:21

Yeah, okay. Well, you're pretty harsh critic here, Lee, in terms of the well, you know, they're people.

Lee Caraher 10:28

People died. And if you're gonna be in that business, you gotta like know. So someone, you know, and this happens a lot, right? 99.99% of the time, flights go up, flights go down, and it's a one-to-one ratio. Um, and it's such an extraordinary experience. That's why it's so newsworthy. More people die in car accidents every year than will ever die in an airplane accident. But the the image is so horrific. The idea that you're with many, many, many other people, and that you can get such a high body count at the same time is why it is newsworthy. Um, so the it's a responsibility. So I know that when we go on vacation in my agency, I always say, you know, it's a it's a long holiday. All right, who is on point? Somebody tell everyone needs to tell the client who's on point if something's wrong. Now, if we do that, no one, nothing's ever wrong. And with when we forget to tell the client who's on point that something goes wrong. And I don't mean to laugh at this horrible, horrible situation, but um, it is Murphy's law on this. It is. You just have to be vigilant and disciplined about these things um when you're in this kind of business. All right.

Shared Brand And Empathy Expectations

Tom Mueller 11:42

Somebody wasn't and and and take a look because we had Jazz issued the the first statement, kind of early morning hours. Yeah. Uh Air Canada was shortly behind with just a factual uh statement um basically saying, you know, Air Canada and Jazz are cooperating with the investigation. Didn't see any empathy, no CEO quote in the Air Canada piece, which I'm wrestling with because it was Jazz Airlines. But at the same time, it is a missed opportunity for the Air Canada team, right? Totally in the statement. Um but then we did see a CEO video came out from Air Canada uh later in the day, the day following the crash. So maybe 12, 15 hours later. I didn't see that.

Lee Caraher 12:36

Yeah, about 12 hours, yeah.

Tom Mueller 12:38

Okay. Which depending on your organization, might be pretty good for getting a CEO video out. But you know, if we just I'm gonna play uh some of that video here, Lee, and then uh get your thoughts on it, okay? Sure.

Michael Rousseau, CEO, Air Canada 12:56

Hello, bonjour. I'm Michael Russo, president and CEO of Air Canada. Today is a very somber day at Air Canada. I'm here to provide information on an accident that occurred involving a Air Canada Express aircraft. The aircraft was operated by Jazz Aviation LP, which operates flights on behalf of Air Canada. First, and most importantly, I want to express our deepest sorrow for everyone affected. Our efforts are focused on the needs of our passengers and crew members, along with our families and loved ones. We know this is a difficult day for everyone, including all of us at Air Canada. We know that there are many questions, but at this early stage, we do not have all the answers, as the circumstances are still being assessed. However, I do want to share the information I have at this time. The event happened at LaGuardie Airport after Air Canada flight AC-8646, operated by Jazz Aviation, a CRJ-900 aircraft traveling from Montreal to New York had landed. Flight AC-8646 was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members for a total of 76 people on board. We now know that the captain and the first officer were killed in this accident. We are deeply saddened by the loss of two jazz employees, and our deepest condolences go out to the entire jazz community and their families. We are working with the authorities to confirm the number of injuries and if there are any other fatalities. We are actively working with all relevant authorities on emergency response efforts. The Air Canada special assistance team has been activated to assist our customers and their families. We're fully supporting the relevant investigative authorities in their investigation to learn everything we can about these events. While that work will take time, anything we can do now, we're doing and right now that means focusing on taking care of those impacted by this incident, including their families. Members of our specialized team will be on their way to New York. We know that many people are concerned about the welfare of their loved ones. And we've set up a special helpline. Friends and family can call 1-800-961-7099. That's 1-800-961-7099. If you believe you've had friends or family on board air candle flight 8646, we understand and appreciate that people are seeking information. Please know that we will provide information as it is verified and cleared by the authorities for release. All our official statements and updates will be posted to our website, AirCanada.com, and to Air Canada's official social media channels. Our team of highly trained professionals will work around the clock to support our customers, their families, and our crew and their families in every way we can, and we'll update you regularly as soon as information becomes available. Thank you. Merci.

Tom Mueller 16:38

Well, that was CEO Michael Rousseau giving us uh his take on that. Now, his words I thought were were pretty well done. Um I mean, he got the empathy in there. Um, it was an English language video in a country that is, you know, a lot of French speakers. And I noticed a lot of criticism of him for only doing this in English, although it was French subtitles. But that did not work for probably half of their audience out there. Would um here's a question for you, Lee, before we dive into the you know the specifics on that. Would you have another executive do a French language video of that if the CEO wasn't a French speaker?

Lee Caraher 17:27

Maybe he's a French speaker? Do we know them?

Tom Mueller 17:30

He's not.

Lee Caraher 17:30

He's not. So yes. Well, I think one, I did not know that. And when I saw the video first with the French subtitles, I'm like, oh, well, they landed in the United States, so of course they did in English first. That was my reaction, but of course I'm in the United States, so that's probably my point of view. Uh yes, I would have done a French language uh version by somebody else uh right at the same time, or right af right leading uh afterwards. It's unfortunate that he's not French speaking since it is Air Canada. The um and I think that the other piece on that, you know, it was sort of it was he was vision, it was late, and I wonder if they did it because they had such many criticisms about how late they had been. Um because Jazz didn't do that. Yeah. Uh and not you don't always get the CEO doing this because Air Canada is relatively large, and um, and I wonder if man, they're getting crucified. Let's put the and if we put the CEO up, that would be a good thing. And it is, yeah, I thought it was a good thing to do um in that situation.

Tom Mueller 18:34

Uh he seemed a little stiff, uncomfortable.

Lee Caraher 18:39

Not every not every CEO is made for being in front of the camera. No, we can just look at the McDonald CEO from a few weeks ago. So um, but what it did do, the C you know, him not being polished, I don't think is a problem because um him doing it was very important. Him not being polished, you know, it'd be great if he if it was easier for him to do, but it also came across much more real, much more authentic, much more like this this is so I'm I'm clearly uncomfortable and I'm clearly having a hard time with it, and not just because it's hard to do, but because of the message I have to deliver is how I interpreted that. So I felt it was real. Um, was it elegant? No, was it the right words? Absolutely. Um, and he uh doubled down on the phone number and um those things. So he was delivering not just the corporate message, but the important message, like call this number if you think you have a family member. So I felt like you know, it wasn't just he wasn't just you know coming in for the hot top tip and then having somebody else like deliver the nuts and bolts. So I appreciated that um a lot. Um but I also wonder if they were gonna if they had if they felt they had to because they missed the the time window.

Tom Mueller 20:02

Yeah. Well, and I appreciate your take on that. I mean, I I look at that and I think this is a CEO. Now, of course, this is a human being, right? And we each have our different levels of comfort in various settings. Some are very comfortable in front of a large group talking, but sort of lock up in front of a camera. Yeah. And you've got to balance all that. I was looking for a little more maybe empathy from him, a little more facial expression, feeling. Yeah, the sentiment. Um, you know, a little bit of hand gestures maybe to make the points. He was a very stiff person, right?

Lee Caraher 20:44

Am I gut? Am I good on that, Tom? Is that was probably his fifth take? And they were like, just get it done because we're losing time here. I did notice it's not a first take situation.

Tom Mueller 20:54

It was not. I did notice some cuts through the final video that came out there. So I think you're spot on there. It was it was a heavy lift to get that done. Now, of course, we uh contrast that with maybe what we've seen from American Airlines or Southwest Airlines in the past, where those CEOs are are just so good doing this, you know, delivering a tough message. And um, to me, they're the the go-tos for all of all of this in terms of delivering it well.

Lee Caraher 21:25

But I'd agree.

Final Takeaways For Crisis Communicators

Tom Mueller 21:27

Yeah, to your point though, they did it, they got it done, um, which is good. So overall, Lee, uh when we think about the communications response here, uh your take is they got the words right. Uh, they missed on the timing.

Lee Caraher 21:45

They got the words and the and the stuff right, right? So they had Air Canada had the microsite ready to go, they had the phone number ready to go, they had the statements, they had all the pieces. It was obviously sitting somewhere and they just turned it on. So they had clearly had all that ready. That doesn't happen. Right. So they had all the pieces right. They the pieces were all delayed. And my my gut says something fa funky happened between Jazz and Air Canada on that. And because really you get to the point, now it's NTSB and FAA, and they're not going to have a lot of say anymore. Because it gets taken over by those organizations, and then they'll obviously the important thing they both said is they're cooperating with everybody who matters on that. But they're not going to have a lot to say in this process until that they're done.

Tom Mueller 22:34

Right. So they get this short window to communicate to their stakeholders about it. And I think, you know, even letters to customers and all that stuff have to be very clearly vetted with NTSB and others. So this is your opportunity to make your point, make your statement. Okay. Well, there you have it. Kind of mixed mixed reject reactions from Lee Carher and Tom Mueller on this. But thankfully that they were prepared, did get communications out, and we're very happy to see that. And we wish the best for everyone as this investigation goes forward. And uh, you know, just bless the hearts of all the family members of those who've been impacted by this.

Lee Caraher 23:21

Yeah. And the air traffic controller guy, you know, he, I mean, he's trying hard. He was he was yelling a lot. And I know he just must be cr just crushed. And the particularly right this second, I'm just gonna say it, this right this second where we have this, you know, the US government shutdown and TSA's not getting paid, and all the pieces. And we already know that the this whole structure is underfunded. To have this on top of it is just these people are helping us uh try travel safely in the air, you know. And to have this on on top of it is just is just crushing, on top of the you know, loss of life and the scariness and all the people who've been hurt.

Tom Mueller 24:01

So Lee, thanks for joining us for this episode.

Lee Caraher 24:04

Happy to be with you.

Tom Mueller 24:06

And that's gonna do it for this episode. Thanks so much for all of you for joining us, especially our overseas listeners. We'd love to hear from you and uh tell your friends and colleagues about us. And we'll see you again soon on another episode. Take care.