It has been more than a month since a large airliner belonging to Malaysia Airlines, flight 370, seemed to have vanished shortly after takeoff from Indonsia toward China.
Here’s the summary, just in case you were traveling to Venus or Xenon and have not been privy to the world news back here on Earth:
The Boeing 777-200ER took off from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, at 12:41 a.m. Saturday, April 7th (12:41 p.m. Friday April 6th). It was scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. the same day, after a roughly 2,700-mile (4,350-kilometer) journey. But around 1:30 a.m., air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
The first indications turned to terriorism. With Russia threatening to beat the door down in the Ukraine; with China and North Korea wanting attention from the West (primarily the USA) to help shore up their desires to remain revelant; and with all kinds of wackos still out there around the world — the fact that two of the passengers got on this international flight with bogus passports which were not “validated”, everyone starting working in that direction.
Then, that was dropped with a great thud when it was revealed that perhaps China was not the destination of the flight; that it had to be changed by the pilot or co-pilot, and then the other shoe fell: all of the data recording and tracking instruments were turned off *manually* or electrically.
(Sounded like a “Leverage” episode, right? The one in which the Leverage team was onboard a plane being misdirected and heading to be crashed by remote control. It took a team effort to find the box in the electronics which was getting the signals from the earth to crash into the Gulf of Mexico, snip the right cables and let the pilot land the plane on a bridge. Whew!! Only thing, there were no bridges in the Indian Ocean!)
What happened next. The pilots did not indicate any problem to the tower, and no distress signal was issued. Malaysian military officials cite radar data as suggesting the plane might have changed course. But the pilots didn’t tell air traffic control that they were doing so. There was a LOT of things that we don’t know about until we can find the plane or what’s left of the plane.
How can a super jumbo-jet disappear?
On my Facebook(tm) “wall” I posted the following last week, as the world was approaching one month since the disappearance:
“I don’t buy ANY of this. The Chinese are holding back on critical information about that plane. How else would THEY know where to look — and misdirecting everyone TWICE about where to look? It started with me with the two guys who boarded the plane with bogus passports. If that was ME boarding that flight, I would have NEVER been on the plane, shackled and tossed into some hole until everything else was sorted out! Then it was the lack of radar — OnStar(tm) knows EXACTLY where my car is, whether it’s parked in a driveway or on the interstate. There’s simply TOO MUCH STUFF which must be “turned off” in order for that plane to go “stealth”. Then, it was the reluctance of several governments to say what happened to the plane — until press pressure forced them to say SOMETHING. Even so, notice the lack of communication from the Chinese government. Something that the Chinese government did not want landing on their soil was on that plane…they intervened, took the plane away from being even close and now they are “in a rush” to find the plane. That’s MY story, and I’m sticking to it!!”
It seems that I wasn’t the only person with a “conspiracy theory” about the plane, it’s 200 or so passengers and whatever else was aboard that plane. The Cable News Network (CNN) and all of it’s competitors up and down the dial had entire rafts of programming and “breaking news” inserts. For an entire month, cable television served us groups of “panels”, with their own “airline experts” and “former pilots” and pundits to discuss and cuss at each other just why THEIR “take on what happened” is the THE ONE that that governments should be looking at.
Which led to Deidre’s email to me yesterday.
In part, she explained her own theory and then she asked:
“Put away your Scouting hats and put on your Army public affairs or Air Force public affairs hat now. You’re in PR – share with me what YOU would have done if you were the PR guy for that airline. Are they on the right track? What else could be done?”
Okay, Dee. As soon as this occurred, I would have had a close door meeting with my team and here’s what I would have directed them to do: find me four employees who speak conversational Chinese. We don’t have anyone — hire some folks. I need them to be available 24 hours a day so that when I speak, they can speak also. Next, I need bios on every person on that plane — demographic information, purpose why they flew with us, whether they are on our frequent flyer program, even previous flights with us. I need to remind people that those were not bill payers on that flight — they are PEOPLE with LIVES. Next, I ask for data on the plane itself. When was the last time it was inspected. When was the last time it was serviced and what things were deferred and what things were fixed. Did anyone complain about noises, smells, bad food, loose wires on the plane — anything. Next, I need to talk with the boss…the president of the airline. He needs to come out and emote to the public. He needs to explain that we are going to do whatever it takes to help find the plane, our passengers and crew, and bring them back if it is possible to their loved ones, workmates and communities.
Then, armed with all of that information, I would sit down and craft the communications plan. Yes, we should have had a contingency plan for what happens when one of our planes is downed. We take that basic plan and craft messages around that plan.
The first things are the communications to the internal workforce. We tell the workforce what we know has occurred, ask them to cooperate with official agencies when asked, ask them to share whatever small bits of information about the flight with the right people and while we are ALL speculating what “may have happened”, none of us really knows what happened until the plane is found and the recorders examined. So please don’t speculate to anyone. And to give up good thoughts, prayers and touches for our employees and guests/passengers.
Those things should be going out on a daily basis to the entire workforce, adding facts about the investigation so that the entire workforce reads/hears about it from US first instead of from CNN, BBC or Sky.
The second things are communications with the families and workplaces of those customers on that flight. Like with the airline’s workforce, the families need to know on a DAILY BASIS that we are indeed doing everything humanly possible to find the plane and their loved ones. I would hold a press briefing daily, with translation in conversational Chinese, to remind those families of a joint loss. I would highlight a word or two about a passenger so that the families know that they are not names on a sheet of paper but lives with context.”
There would be a plan, Dee. I would carry out that plan and modify that plan as the weeks turn into a month; and now that a month may turn into two before the plane is actually found and the plan is modified to add details about the recovery and restoration on land in Australia.
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