Weekly Reading Research Analytical Exercise

Weekly Reading Research Analytical Exercise

William Concowich views Boeing’s crisis response as inadequate. Two of Boeing’s planes were involved in devastating accidents that left all passengers onboard dead. However, instead of Boeing acting quickly to ground the aircraft, the company insisted that its planes were safe. Even after the accidents, Boeing took no action. The action was taken to ground the aircraft only after the US federal aviation agency ordered the planes grounded some days after the accident happened, seemingly due to public pressure. Concowich argues that Boeing could have managed the situation more effectively and efficiently if it had acted voluntarily and proactively to ground the planes immediately the first crash occurred.  Although the crisis came due to the plane crashes, the company could have avoided the crisis by containing the situation in a better way. Boeing could have addressed the problem it was facing publicly and change how the problem was viewed by the public and other concerned parties such as its customers.

Framing the situation in a better response could have triggered immediate action. Boeing’s response to the crisis is inadequate. Boeing insisted that the problem could be rectified by training pilots to override automatic controls when the need arose. Boeing seemed to know that technical problems caused the first tragedy, yet it did not remedy the issues in the existing planes. The public may have concluded that Boeing was not concerned with passengers’ safety but somewhat losing some of its market space. However, maybe grounding the aircraft after the first crash and commencing a transparent investigation could have indicated that Boeing was dedicated to its passenger’s safety.

Comcowich criticized Boeing’s overall handling of the PR disputes. Boeing, a significant media mistake through its CEO who claimed that a technical problem caused the tragedy, but training pilots could rectify it. Yet, investigations on the crash site bore no cause of the disaster. Boeing could have avoided committing such a mistake by framing the situation in a way that did not attract negative attention from the public. According to Boeing’s CEO, the problem originated from the cockpit, where the company implemented new software and failed to tell the pilots about the implementation. The CEO worsened the media mistake by telling media houses that Boeing’s communication with its clients, public, and regulators was inconsistent and thus was unacceptable. Therefore, William Concowich’s criticism of Boeing’s handling of the public relations crisis is correct. Although Boeing admitted its mistake, the approach used further showed that Boeing was only concerned with its operations rather than the safety of passengers. Boeing CEO expressed that although the planes had been grounded for several months, they would be cleared to fly within the year (HuffPost, 2019). Boeing failed to acknowledge the blame of the two tragedies by insisting that it would ensure the plane was safer. To show that indeed the company was working on improving plane safety, Boeing’s CEO showed the committee responsible for settling the issue some of the software upgrades it had performed on some of the software linked to the crash. However, the company still held more of the internal messages concerning the tragedy.

Moreover, the media mistake came from other errors such as the Boeing’s CEO saying that it was uncertain to say that the angle of attack alert disagreement which was missing in the planes would have made a big difference, (BBC News, 2019). Therefore, the company is still concealing more details from the public. Also, the presence of the angle of attack would not have prevented the tragedy.

References

BBCNews. (2019, May 30). Boeing admits it ‘fell short’ on safety alert for 737. Retrieved from BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48461110

HuffPost. (2019, June 12). Boeing CEO Admits’ Mistake’ Made With Embattled 737 Max Jets. Retrieved from HuffPost: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/boeing-ceo-mistake-737-max_n_5d074f5fe4b0985c41a041b8