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Transcript

Stephen Miles: What happened was is one of their planes was flying out of Singapore and the engine blew up and they had to do an emergency landing and everything was safe and they landed the plane and everything was good, but coming out of that obviously Qantas grounded their entire A380 fleet and the CEO of Qantas had to reestablish a connection with the broader constituencies, everybody who flies in airplanes, A); and then B); everybody who flies on Qantas airplanes and then sort of reestablish this connection with them that everything is going to be okay, we’re handling this, here are all the safety protocols that we’re going through, Rolls Royce who make the engine we’re in deep discussions with them and we’re not going to put them in the air again until they’re safe and by the way, when the first one flies I'm going to be on it. That is what the CEO did and he was on it.

What he said in the article though is he missed the opportunity through social media, Twitter, blogs, every social media outlet to really touch in real time the broader constituencies and he said his learning was if I'm ever in a crisis like that again I'm going to really take that seriously so I can touch people so they know what is going on personally, they don’t have to wait for a press release.

Recorded January 12, 2011
Interviewed by Max Miller
Directed by Jonathan Fowler
Produced by Elizabeth Rodd