Scenario
FareGo is a small but rapidly growing aviation company operating executive charter and supplementary airline services. The company fleet is a mix of Beechcraft Super King Air and Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft. The parking bays at FareGo’s home base include access to a covered walkway similar to an aerobridge— that is used to deliver passengers to the aircraft. It is the airport operator’s policy that aircraft are to be pushed back by a tug from the walkway structure prior to starting engines.
FareGo has only been operating the Dash 8 aircraft for just over six months. The tow bars used for pushback are almost identical to the ones used for the smaller and lighter Super King Airs. When the Dash 8s arrived, the tow bars supplied with them were red. The company colour is royal blue, and all aircraft and support equipment feature the colour as a marketing tool. The marketing department specified that the Dash 8 tow bars must be repainted to conform to the company’s marketing strategy.
Since repainting the tow bars, there have been a number of incidents where the wrong tow bar has been used to pushback the Dash 8 aircraft. The King Air tow bars aren’t strong enough to push the Dash 8 and often bend or, on occasions, the shear pin breaks. After the last incident, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bruce Bigwig, stated that if there were another incident, the person responsible would ‘get the sack’ (have their employment terminated).
The Chief Engineer, Max Continuous, produced a policy that no aircraft could be pushed back without the tow bar in use being inspected by a second engineer to confirm the correct one was fitted. This was approved by the Safety Committee at a special meeting and signed off by the CEO a couple of months ago.
However, last week an incident happened. On that day, only two engineers were rostered for tarmac and dispatch duties to reduce staff costs, despite being a busy day. Rob, a young engineer, was ready to conduct the push back of a Dash 8, only waiting for a confirmation of the tow bar from the other engineer on duty. Unfortunately, the other engineer was dealing with a pre-dispatch fault on an aircraft a few bays away and was therefore delayed in his attendance. There were other engineers in the hangar, but Rob had no way of getting a message to them. The captain of Rob’s pushback was becoming agitated. He advised Rob that if he didn't push right away, he wouldn't make curfew at his destination and the company would be responsible for overnight costs for all his passengers. As the aircraft was full, this would be significant. Rob was sure he had fitted the correct tow bar and commenced the pushback. He had only moved a few metres when the shear pin broke, and the disconnected aircraft continued rolling backwards. The captain was stunned and instinctively applied braking, which caused the aircraft to stop suddenly. A flight attendant standing in the cabin delivering the safety demonstration fell and suffered a broken arm. As a result, the aircraft was grounded, and the flight cancelled with significant cost to the company not to mention the personal injury—and associated sick leave—to the flight attendant.
The CEO was furious and wanted to dismiss Rob. However, you convinced him that the best course of action is to paint the bars with different colours and use the strongest one to push back both aircraft models. This would require a considerable investment from the company, but also will guarantee the mistake won’t happen again. You also convinced him that by showing care to their employees, the company will build a strong just culture in which blame is replaced with learning and empathy. You presented this idea to the Safety Committee that accepted it despite hesitation from the Marketing team and the Chief Engineer. The Safety Committee tasked you to prepare a proposal of communication to all employees (from all levels) which should present (a) the incident, (b) the lessons learned, (c) what the company will do to avoid the same event from happening again and (d) how the company would benefit from this change, despite the substantial investment required. You retire to your office and get to work.
Your task for this assessment is to prepare a recoded presentation to the next Safety Committee meeting, in which:
- You should select and justify the communication strategy to address the content and make sure the message to all the employees is clear. You can propose an email, marketing campaign, brochure, bulletin, infographic, presentation, video, to name a few mediums commonly used.
- The slides should cover:
- The main message to be communicated with the employees and the sequence of information to be presented.
- The main characteristic of the target audience.
- How the message will be communicated by showing the select medium (email, bulletins, infographic, etc.) and justifying your choice using at least 1 scientific journal article.
- A sneak peek of how the communication will look like. It doesn’t need to be a draft version, but it should give the Safety Committee a good understanding of what will be released to the employees.
