British Airways’ IT failure over the late-May Bank Holiday weekend attracted heaps of opprobrium to the long-established carrier – and the sort of headlines that any executive would want to avoid at all costs.

Quoted in the Guardian, university lecturer Dr Philip Abraham described the jam-packed Heathrow Terminal 5 that the breakdown spawned as “the angriest place I’ve ever been”. In the same article, childcare assistant Rose Drury said that the luggage she was unable to access during the technical slump contained important medication that she’d had to skip for two days running, thanks to the ensuing chaos.

BA’s leadership during the IT failure came in for particularly heavy criticism, with chief executive Alex Cruz only emerging towards the end of the crisis to tell the BBC, “I don’t think it would make much use for me to resign at this particular time.” This absence was reflected in comments from GMB transportation lead Mick Rix, who said: “Our members have had to bear the brunt of the passengers’ wrath, because the senior executives and staff went running for cover.”

 

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has used the incident as a hook to direct its member firms towards its PR Crisis Management service, pointing out: “BA’s situation is a clear example of why companies of all sizes need to have a good crisis communications plan in place.”

So, what could BA have done better – and which leadership skills should be at the forefront of a leader’s mind during a potentially damaging company failure?

The Institute of Leadership and Management's CEO Phil James says: “It’s all too easy to mistake a crisis communications plan for a more general crisis plan. Once something has gone wrong, yes, you need to be able to fix it. But what tripped up BA, to their absolute cost, was their inability, unwillingness and unreadiness to make themselves accountable to their passengers through clear and sensitive communications. This proved to be far more damaging than the actual crisis itself, and certainly indicates, as the FSB rightly points out, that companies of all sizes need to have a crisis communications plan in place.”

In James’ view, BA’s customer experiences are a far cry from the ‘Moments of Truth’ model that airline-industry legends Richard Normann and Jan Carlzon put forward in the 1980s. “Their model focused on the many points of contact that customers have with frontline staff every day,” he explains. “In Normann and Carlzon’s view, frontline workers not only bear the brunt of customers’ frustration, but should also have the ability to correct any flaws.

“In the case of BA’s IT failure, they couldn’t. It wasn’t about writing cheques for lost luggage, or booking people into hotels – it was a deeper-seated, systemic problem beyond their control. But thanks to the absence of clear communications, customers kept on arriving. There was no programme in place to tell them to stay away, or to make alternative plans.”

James adds: “Carlzon’s most useful quote on this subject is, ‘Mistakes can usually be corrected later; the time that is lost in not making a decision can never be retrieved.’ And I think that’s what has happened in BA’s case. Everyone was asking, ‘What are we going to do?’ But no one knew – so they did nothing. That absence of decisiveness, rather than being seen to at least try to steady the ship, was hugely detrimental.

“The reasons behind the chaos itself are entirely secondary to the question of what the firm should have done to stop things from getting worse and to start putting it right. I think that’s where BA absolutely let their staff and customers down.”

For further insights on how to generate customer loyalty, check out this learning item from the Institute

Image of BA homepage courtesy of chrisdorney, via Shutterstock