September 2014

When a crisis becomes a catastrophe:
Reflections on the Malaysia Airlines crises and implications for crisis management best practice
By Tim Johnson, Chief Operating Officer, Regester Larkin and Jacqueline Ratcliffe, Managing Consultant, Regester Larkin Asia Pacific

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Copyright Regester Larkin 2014 All rights reserved.

It is every CEO’s worst fear: an event resulting in mass loss of life that becomes indelibly associated with your organisation. Malaysia Airlines experienced two such events in four months. The disappearance of flight MH370 on 8 March 2014 and shooting down of flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 presented an unprecedented challenge to the organisation, pushing it into nationalisation. But these tragic events also posed fundamental questions about the tension between crisis management best practice and the challenges of delivering a response to a dynamic, emotionally-charged situation in which control over partners and access to information is limited. In this thought piece, Tim Johnson, Chief Operating Officer of Regester Larkin Group and Jacqueline Ratcliffe, Managing Consultant of Regester Larkin Asia Pacific, make six observations about Malaysia Airlines’ response to MH370 and MH17. In exploring these issues, they do not seek to judge the actions that were taken; rather they try to draw some conclusions about what these incidents mean for the evolution of crisis management best practice. Before examining the observations in detail, it is perhaps useful to consider the anatomy of the two crises.

The downing of MH17 was, by contrast, an example of an incident-led externally-driven crisis. This type of situation also materialises suddenly, but the organisation is not considered at ‘fault’; Malaysia Airlines (and the families of those on board) were considered ‘victims’. In a 24/7 news environment, an organisation needs to