RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)--Relatives of victims of Brazil's Tam Air CRASH filed suit in Miami seeking damages in 59 wrongful death complaints. Plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial for pain and suffering, lost value of life, funeral expenses and other damages. The TAM Airlines Flight 3054 crash killed 199 people. Masry and Vititoe's partner Podhurst Orseck filed the first case ten days after the accident occurred.
Charged are TAM S.A. (TAM), its pilots and maintenance personnel, France-based Airbus; Goodrich Corp. ( GR) of Charlotte, North Carolina; International Aero Engines AG of East Hartford, Connecticut; and Pegasus Aviation IV Inc. of Delaware. The thrust reverser slows the jet down when it lands. Without a working right thrust reverser, it didn't have enough room to stop on the runway, he said.
Atty Steven C. Marks said."Responsibility not only lies with the companies that manufactured and handled maintenance for the aircraft," and that the flight crew knew there were problems with the aircraft before the disaster because the plane's right thrust reverser had been deactivated before the flight.
Brazil's largest airline, was trying to reach agreements with families of victims and did not have an immediate comment.
src: Dow Jones Newswires; South Florida Lawyers blog
About Me
A Note about Tam
TAM is a huge airline with all the resources necessary to have assigned human beings to notify families of their dead.
Such a notification would be painful, indeed, more than words can describe.
But even worse, imagine going on the internet, reviewing the manifest that was made available to the public within hours and finding your mom’s name or your mom and dad’s name or your wife, or your husband.
Imagine that for a moment.
Imagine that days go by and no one from TAM makes any personal notifications to families. No one calls, no one connects on a one on one basis.
What were they thinking when they released the manifest to the public prior to any attempt of locating the next of kin?
TAM, fire the person or persons who made the decision to release the manifest.
Get your act together.
Have a plan in place.
Have people who can be on call immediately to handle these matters.
No matter what you end up paying the family for their losses, they will never forget how they learned about the death of their loved ones.
Shame on you, TAM
----------------------
How about giving a choice to a passenger about boarding a plane that has 1/3 of its braking system disabled.
In the Tam crash of July 2007, all parties agree that the right thrust reverser was disabled. They defend that position by stating that the documentation for an Airbus A320 allows the plane to fly for up to 10 days with a disabled thruster(s).
So let's say that Tam had let everyone that was boarding that plane know about the thrust reverser. Let's say they had even played down the importance of having it operational. Had the passengers known about the disabled thruster, and had they known that it compliments the braking system, what would they have done?
It is possible that not all the passengers would have boarded. Some probably would have transferred to another flight, or would have gone home and waited for another day. But no one was given that notice.
Think about it: the wheel brakes, the wing flaps and the thrust reverser are the breaking system for an airbus a320. I'm not certain that even a seasoned flyer as I am that I would have gone on board knowing that part of the breaking system was not functional.
Mandatory warnings should be required when a plane with broken, flawed, or partially disabled systems is used as if functioning at 100%. Speaking personally on my own behalf, I believe this warning issue–or failure to warn issue–should be legally addressed.
If only one person had not boarded that plane, that would have been one less fatality.
For More of George Hatcher, visit the following links:
Such a notification would be painful, indeed, more than words can describe.
But even worse, imagine going on the internet, reviewing the manifest that was made available to the public within hours and finding your mom’s name or your mom and dad’s name or your wife, or your husband.
Imagine that for a moment.
Imagine that days go by and no one from TAM makes any personal notifications to families. No one calls, no one connects on a one on one basis.
What were they thinking when they released the manifest to the public prior to any attempt of locating the next of kin?
TAM, fire the person or persons who made the decision to release the manifest.
Get your act together.
Have a plan in place.
Have people who can be on call immediately to handle these matters.
No matter what you end up paying the family for their losses, they will never forget how they learned about the death of their loved ones.
Shame on you, TAM
----------------------
How about giving a choice to a passenger about boarding a plane that has 1/3 of its braking system disabled.
In the Tam crash of July 2007, all parties agree that the right thrust reverser was disabled. They defend that position by stating that the documentation for an Airbus A320 allows the plane to fly for up to 10 days with a disabled thruster(s).
So let's say that Tam had let everyone that was boarding that plane know about the thrust reverser. Let's say they had even played down the importance of having it operational. Had the passengers known about the disabled thruster, and had they known that it compliments the braking system, what would they have done?
It is possible that not all the passengers would have boarded. Some probably would have transferred to another flight, or would have gone home and waited for another day. But no one was given that notice.
Think about it: the wheel brakes, the wing flaps and the thrust reverser are the breaking system for an airbus a320. I'm not certain that even a seasoned flyer as I am that I would have gone on board knowing that part of the breaking system was not functional.
Mandatory warnings should be required when a plane with broken, flawed, or partially disabled systems is used as if functioning at 100%. Speaking personally on my own behalf, I believe this warning issue–or failure to warn issue–should be legally addressed.
If only one person had not boarded that plane, that would have been one less fatality.
For More of George Hatcher, visit the following links:
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1 comment:
TAM broke the public relation´s golden rule in this cases of air crash disasters: to be the first one to communicate the relatives the bad news. This allowed the local and international media to take advantage of the grieving relatives and publish a huge amount of bad publicity against TAM, while the airline continued to implement an strategy of keeping a tight lid over any information the media requested. This is a very common behavior among many Latin American companies that resist in implementing a crisis communication plan and prefer the ostrich´s performance by sticking their head in the ground, hoping that time will make the public to forget the incident, but in these cases the relatives never forget, and will keep using the media to "bad mouth" the airline.
Another very common error among these companies is that they confuse Public Relations with Marketing, although both practices a are similar but differ in their objetives, the airlines in order to save money prefer to hire a Marketing expert, that knows a lot about advertising but very little about crisis management. I asked once a local airline Public Relations Director if she ever took a Media Training course and her response was "what´s that?". Immediately provided a long list of the many courses in Marketing and Advertising she attended.
Worst yet, other companies don´t even have a Public Relations professional on their staff and these crisis are totally handed over to their law firms, which are very good lawyers but have very small knowledge of how to handle the media and don´t rely on a media consultant.
TAM violó la regla de oro al no ser ellos los primeros de notificar a los familiares antes de que los medios de comunicación fueran los transmisores de las malas noticias. Ello dio pie para que los medios de comunicación aprovechasen para sacarle toda la información los familiares y darle mala publicity a la línea aérea. Esto es muy típico en América Latina donde las empresas no tienen un plan de manejo de crisis y optan por implementar la estrategia del avestruz al esconder la cabeza en la tierra, con la esperanza de que el público a la larga terminará por olvidar el incidente. Lo que no toman en cuenta es que los familiares de las víctimas nunca olvidarán sus seres queridos y acudirán cada vez que pueden a los medios para despretigiar la línea aérea.
Otro error muy común entre estas compañías de aviación comercial es que confunden Marketing con Relaciones Públicas. Aunque son disciplinas muy similares son muy distintas en sus objetivos. A fin de ahorrar unos cuantos centavos, estas empresas prefieren emplear un experto de publicidad y mercadeo que uno en relaciones públicas con conocimiento de manejode crisis. Una vez le pregunté a una directora de Relaciones Públicas de una aerolínea local si había asistido a un curso de capacitación de medios de comunicación y me preguntó llanamente: "qué demonios es eso". Luego para justificar su ignoracia procedio a dar una extensa lista de los cursos de publicidad y mercadeo a los cuales había asistido.
Pero aún, muchas aerolíneas en la región no cuentan siquiera con un departamento de relaciones públicas, y cuando ocurre una situación de crisis le entregan toda la responsabilidad del manejo de los medios a su buffet de abogados, expertos en el manejo del ramo legal pero totalmente inexpertos en el manejo de los medios de comunicación y de los mensajes que deben transmitir y no cuentan con un asesor en relacines públicas.
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