Crisis communication for London Luton Airport

4C played a leading role in shaping and developing LLA’s crisis communications plan, and lead the ongoing review of documents as well as post-incident debriefs. This ensured that consultants understood the organisation and its teams, and could combine this knowledge with the industry best practice gleaned from combined experience in other settings. This also meant that feedback was easily shared, and recommendations for improvements could be detailed and relevant.

Over time, consultants from 4C have been able to understand the relationship between the Crisis Communications Team and other Crisis Management plans, policies and processes at LLA. This is important, as organisations perform best when they avoid performing their various crisis management functions in silos.

In this high-pressure situation, the Crisis Communications Team were confident in their abilities and able convey the priorities of the airport to the general public. A particular strength was the ability for the Crisis Communications Team to take a leading role in the overall airport crisis response and support their colleagues by acting as a ‘go-to’ for situational awareness as the incident unfolded. This was made possible by the ongoing training provided by 4C, which included both general and scenario-specific table-top exercises, presenting a number of ‘worst-case’ scenarios.

Don’t just take our word for it. The Crisis Communications Team at London Luton Airport have since been recognised with a PR Week award, PR Moment award, and the CIPR Excellence Award. Of particular note was the feedback that “the team evidently have a robust crisis communication plan in place [which] was apparent in the results achieved … a clear winner for this category.”