Virgin’s Volcanic PR

Claire Thompson, freelance PR consultant, Waves PR

On Virgin’s communications during the volcano crisis.

Virgin Airways didn’t appear to engage much with the whole stranded passengers affair, possibly because less of its flights were affected. Most negative comment seems to focus on stranded passenger in Mauritius, where communication has apparently been poor, and ‘rescue’ has been slow.

For the most part, however, passenger dissatisfaction appeared to  focus far more on other airlines.

Twitter presence

Sites identified as belonging to Virgin included:

http://twitter.com/VirginAmerica – very little about the stranded passenger situation.

http://twitter.com/VirginAtlantic – is engaging one to one

http://twitter.com/VirginBlue – really a Virgin site?

Communications

In the midst of people wanting information, Virgin was making announcements including a new Twitter presence

Announcements:

Virgin did post a very clear statement of what passenger should do, and of what expenses they will cover. And Richard Branson blogged – which disgruntled passengers used as a sounding post.

Overall, however, Virgin expressed a good sense of priorities in its statements:

In an effort to prioritise and repatriate the passengers stranded away from their homes, we are not accepting any new bookings for travel from Monday 19 April 2010 up to and including Friday 30 April 2010 April.

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1. PR Implications of the Volcano Crisis | Waves PR, freelance PR consultant, UK — April 22, 2010 @ 11:55 pm

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