Accident with Airbus THAI: Crisis management is a profession

There's an expression I don't remember exactly that goes something like this: The NRC is read by people who rule the country, the Volkskrant by people who want to rule the country and then there was a newspaper, whose name I forgot, with readers who don't care who rules the country as long as they have tits (and I suppose show them too).

I always think of this when I read the snooty comments from the bangkok mail, de NRC of Thailand, read. Because how well does that newspaper know how the country should be governed or rather: thinks it knows. Sometimes the newspaper seems to be a mouthpiece for the opposition party Democrats. I write 'sometimes', because even when the Democrats were in power under Abhisit, they regularly cracked down on government policy. But now that the signs have been put up, BP is aiming its arrows at the government.

In the editorial of September 12, Thai Airways International (THAI) gets a beating. The reception of passengers on the ground left much to be desired, so every reason to thoroughly wash THAI's ears. But dear readers: not a word about that. No, the editors in chief chastise the company because immediately after Sunday's accident the logos were painted black.

A 'clumsy cover-up', writes BP, because the paint job became a major news item in numerous foreign media, such as CNN, USA Today en The Guardian. I have not seen the Dutch media, but they must have also dived into it. And so THAI achieved the opposite of what it intended with that operation, namely the prevention of image damage. That was apparently more important than a simple glass of water for the shocked passengers, who were left to fend for themselves in the terminal.

Of course, covering up the logos was clumsy – it would have been even better, one commenter suggests, if THAI had enlisted the help of David Copperfield – but covering up the complaints is a serious oversight by the paper. BP and THAI don't understand that the customer should be king, and apparently THAI don't know that you can shoot with a mobile phone, so photos of the device before the paint job went around the world. Yes, crisis management is a profession.