Leeds Bradford Airport faced an unplanned runway closure due to an incident with the Tarmac. Hatch as the retained crisis communications team, and on-call crisis support were called upon to handle the communications.
The event took place on a Friday evening, with Hatch being notified via phone call from the on-call ADM at 8pm on Friday evening. The airport follows a crisis communications plan that involves notifying the crisis comms team (Hatch) of any incidents.
/ PR
/ Crisis Comms
The team was notified of an issue just after 8pm and told to wait to receive more information.
30-minutes later the Airport Duty Manager (ADM) provided the information that the runway was closed.
Following this, media enquiries began and within 10 minutes of the first enquiry the statement was approved and shared with media and uploaded to LBA socials.
As and when new information became available, Hatch and the LBA team updated statements, informing media and customers via social channels.
Following this, the ADM kept Hatch updated throughout the night, Hatch shared the statement with all media that enquired and sent an update in the morning when the runway re-opened. Sentiment post-crisis remained positive – most passengers understood that the airport had reacted quickly and dealt with the issue in a very timely manner. All messages across press and social were consistent and provided by the Hatch crisis comms team.
Related Case Studies
SKY’S THE LIMIT: TAKING OFF WITH A SUPERCHARGED PR STRATEGY
LAUNCHING A NEW £100M TERMINAL FOR LBA
