Cheap airline – even cheaper PR!

There is a principle in modern Public Relations when handling an adverse news story, or bad press, and that can be sumarised as ‘come out quick, come out loud, come out honest’.

In the airline industry, you can see this in the way Qantas handled the A380 Singapore engine explosion – even co-operating with 4 Corners in making a documentary.

Today, when talking about two cancelled flights out of Melbourne that would create chaos for the airline over the Easter break, Tiger Airways showed exactly how NOT to deal with bad publicity.

Tiger spokeswoman Vanessa Regan said the planes were near capacity, with about 170 passengers on each flight. She apologised to passengers, saying the cancellations were due to “operational reasons”.

It comes as the budget airline faces being grounded by the aviation regulator following a series of serious safety and maintenance breaches.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) issued Tiger with a show cause notice on March 23 giving the airline 21 days to respond, News Ltd has reported.

CASA raised concerns the cut-price carrier was not following proper procedures to ensure the utmost safety of passengers, and demanded urgent answers amid concerns pilot training standards had slipped and short cuts had been taken on maintenance and other operations.

Ms Regan said the airline had a policy of not commenting on dealings with aviation regulators.
“However, last month, CASA asked Tiger to clarify certain matters, which Tiger has responded to promptly in full,” she said.

. . . and as yet no mention of any problem on their website home page.

I think their low-cost model even extends to the cheapness of the PR advice they get.