In the recent blog of “Malaysia Airlines Grapples With HM370 Crisis Management” from brandchannel. com, MA has removed all promotional material from its social pages, with its Facebook and Twitter outposts focusing only on the flight as the news continues to break. Not surprisingly, company’s reaction after such sensational incidents happened is extremely important in terms of both the brand image and company’s reputation.

“Malaysia Airlines has so far has demonstrated its professionalism in handling this crisis-like situation. Their burden remains heavy, but they can at least take comfort that CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya and his team know what they are doing.”

The blog believes the airline is doing a good job employing the “Triple R of crisis communications: Regret, Reason and Remedy.” Earlier after the incident took place, MA stated that “As of now, we have 115 family members in Kuala Lumpur and they are taken care of by 72 different caregivers. At least one caregiver is assigned to each family together with a Mandarin translator for the families from China. Equal amount of initial financial assistance are being given out to all families of passengers and crew over and above their basic needs. This amount is extended to families of all crew and passengers in Malaysia as well those from other nations. We regret and empathise with the families and we will do whatever we can to ease their burden. We are as anxious as the families to know the status of their loved ones.”

Without any doubt, the threat to the organization is tremendous as shares of MA were sharply lower by as much as 20% after the flight went missing. As a result, crisis management, that is a process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public seems particularly crucial.

Next, MA turned all its digital assets to unraveling the pieces of the puzzle while pointing on social to their Dark Site – a ‘dormant’ site activated in times of crisis for updates. “Such coordination and activation within hours of the incident suggests a company that takes crisis management seriously and has drilled its employees to be able to carry out such tasks under the pressure of public scrutiny,” concludes Unspun.