INTRODUCTION

Today’s managing the crisis is a critical function of the organization. This is because crisis
situations can happen to everyone, everywhere, at any time without realizing it. Failure to manage
properly the crisis can cause serious harm to stakeholder or losses to an organization and even the
company’s survival. Therefore, organization need to take preventive action to reduce the impact
of crisis that will affect the organization.

According to Hale et al., (2005) crisis is any situation or series of events that threaten to
harm people or property and negatively impact and damage the organization, its stakeholders or
even the entire industry unless it is effectively and efficiently addressed. Millar (2004) viewed
crisis as an unexpectedly occurring event that requires quick reaction because it threatens the
operations of the company. Depending on these different definitions, we can define crisis as an
unexpected incident that bring a negative impact.

Many scholars also have made various attempts to classify the crisis in order to facilitate
improvements in how companies manage the crisis. For example, Lerbinger (1997) has developed
four types of crisis, called technological crises, confrontational crisis, malevolence crisis and
management failure crisis. Besides, Bernstein (2011) has categorized crisis into three group that
they called creeping crisis, slow-burn crisis and sudden crisis. Coombs (1999) has identified nine
types crisis which is natural disasters, malevolence, technical breakdowns, human breakdowns,
threats, mega-damage, workplace violence, organizational misdeeds, and rumors.

There are many types of crisis have happened on this word and one of it is airline crisis.
Airline accidents are tragic occurrences around the world and have been reported since the early
days of aviation. These crises involve human tragedy and have attract considerable public attention
and scrutiny, especially in the media. According to Malone (2009) through technology
advancement, news coverage of a crisis is not only a regional event, but also a global media
activity. While most airline companies have succeeded in reducing factors that could lead to
accidents, crises still occur due to the complex nature of airline technology, human factors and the
sector's interdependent nature (Ray, 1999).
 The world was shocked when news about Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared
from the radar after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). This crisis was the first
aircraft issue that happens in 2014 in Malaysia. On 8 March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
lost contact with Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control Center (KLATCC) while flying in Malaysian-
Vietnamese airspace just 40 minutes after departing from Kuala Lumpur International Airport
(Zafra and Maydell, 2018). According to The Star online, the aircraft was carrying 227 passengers,
including two infants, from 13 different nationalities and 12 crew members and was scheduled to
arrive in Beijing at 6.40 am.

Flight MH370 signal disappeared from Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department at 1.30 am.
However, the aircraft did not enter Chinese airspace or contacted Chinese controllers (Abu Bakar,
2014). Besides, according to Doug (2014) the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) was activated
nearly five hours after the plane took off and MH370 flight was reported as "missing" later. The
number of countries involved in detecting MH370 aircraft has increased to 26 countries including
Vietnam, Australia and France. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak officially confirmed on 24
March 2014 that the missing plane had crashed in the South Indian Ocean (John, 2014). In addition,
this incident also has hit the Malaysian aviation business and the airline’s reputation became
severely damaged.
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