Leading and Managing Crisis

Paper Draft

Overview of the incident

On 23rd March 1994, the aircraft Airbus A310 departed from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo

International Airport. The Aeroflot Flight 593 was an ordinary passenger flight, operating the

route from Moscow to Hong Kong. The presence of the relief captain’s children in the flight

deck was attributed as the cause of disaster. The pilot allowed the children to sit at the controls

and interact with them, though the aircraft was in autopilot mode. Though his daughter did no

changes to the controls, the relief captain’s son disabled the autopilot control by applying enough

force to the control steering (The New York Times). Later the pilots attempted to gain control,

however, by that time, the airplane had lost too much altitude. The aircraft crashed into a remote

mountain range, killing all 63 passengers and 12 crew members.

Theoretical Perspectives

Crisis Management

Crisis management is a proactive process through which an organization deals with a disruptive

event before it takes place, during its execution and aftermath (Simola, 2014).

Lifecycle of a crisis

The crisis management is a three stage process: pre crisis condition, crisis stage and post crisis

condition (Coombs, 2014).

Stages of Aeroflot Flight 593 disaster

Pre-conditions: The preconditions of a disaster are similar to a pre-crisis phase, where early

signals or warnings are diagnosed. Their actions are classified as a disregard to flight safety and

flight regulations.

Trigger: A trigger is usually an act or behavior that causes the inception of a crisis. In the case

under discussion, the pilot’s son act of shifting the control column produced a trigger. It has been

observed that handing the control column to an authorized and untrained person was a highly

risky act. It was an evident negligence of the relief pilot to not supervise the control inputs of his

children.

Crisis: On flight 593, after inspecting an unknown path direction on the screen, the pilots failed

to understand the situation. It can be claimed that the flight crew members lack the ability for

critical decision making. Had they attended to the first warning, the situation would not have

escalated. Furthermore, the co-pilot’s attempt to regain control was an uncalculated act.

Post-crisis: There were assumptions about a potential technical or system failure or suspected

terrorists activity. The flight data and voice recorded later refuted the claims. The subsidiary

airline initially refused to accept the investigation report.

 References

‘Tape Confirms The Pilot's Son Caused Crash Of Russian Jet’. 1994. The New York Times.

Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/28/world/tape-confirms-the-pilot-s-son-

caused-crash-of-russian-jet.html

Coombs, W.T., 2014. Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.

Sage Publications

Simola, S., 2014. Teaching corporate crisis management through business ethics

education. European Journal of Training and Development, 38(5), pp.483-503.