New Tech Has Become Necessary To Airlines’ Crisis Response

This year, several airline CEOs have found themselves in the very unwanted position of managing an air accident. How they prepare and manage through a crisis can make a huge difference in how the airline and its leaders are perceived.

“In an environment where information can spread so quickly, it is crucial for airlines to be prepared to react swiftly and accurately,” Vueling emergency response manager Laura Diaz said. Mobile phones and video doorbells are increasing air accident visibility, putting even more pressure on crisis response teams. For example, immediately after the December 2024 Jeju Air and February 2025 Endeavor Air accidents, footage was quick to appear on social media and news sites around the world. It was the same with the Air India Boeing 787 crash in June.

“There used to be the view that day one was your most important day,” Andrew Kelly, group corporate affairs director at Ireland-based ASL Aviation Holdings, which oversees eight airlines and 160 aircraft. “Today we’re almost seeing incidents live on air. It’s now the first 15 minutes. There is no time to get up, get dressed and drive to the office.”

However, a surprising number of airlines still gather their crisis teams around a whiteboard to coordinate their emergency response. This seems out of touch with today’s digital reality.

Jeff Morgan, owner and CEO at US-based crisis response company Aviem International, used to work in flight operations at Delta Air Lines. “In 1996, we created the very first dedicated emergency management department of any airline in the world,” Morgan said. “Crisis management hasn’t moved along much in the airline industry.”

More than half of Aviem’s airline customers still depend on manual processes, mixed in with day-to-day technologies like Microsoft Excel and Teams. “The number one tool most airlines use is Excel,” Morgan said. “I wouldn’t say they’re totally paper- and whiteboard-based, but they’re not using a true-for-purpose crisis management system. It’s somewhere in between.”

Kenyon International Emergency Services strategic advisor Jerry Allen, who used to run IATA’s airline emergency response program, echoed that perspective. “Every day, I see airports and airlines routinely falling back on those manual systems: whiteboards, flip charts, spreadsheets, because they know how to use them,” he said.

ASL and Vueling are taking a more technology-driven approach. “Vueling is a digital native airline,” Diaz said. “We need to have digital tools that are accessible from anywhere, at any time.”

ASL came to the realization that manual processes could not keep pace with communications when there’s an incident. “We were trying to respond in a digital age with paper trails,” Kelly said. “From the second it happens, you are live, you are active, and the only way you can do that is to have the same technology as everybody else. It needs to be instant, it needs to be accurate, and it also needs to be mobile.”

ASL and Vueling use an emergency management system from Dublin-based D4H. This platform acts as a central source of information during an incident and tracks progress against the airline’s emergency plan. Both ASL and Vueling  also have practical support from specialist firms like Kenyon.

Robin Blandford created D4H for search and rescue operations in 2007. Since then, D4H has evolved into a real-time crisis management platform which is used by 14 commercial airlines, including ASL, Etihad and Vueling. Blandford said around half of D4H’s airlines previously used “binders on a shelf” in airside crisis rooms.

“Ultimately, when you’re responding to an incident, you’re trying to establish facts, alert the right people and make sure you’ve documented the situation,” Blandford said. “You’re trying to build an incident action plan.”

The crisis team receives an automated notification as soon as an incident occurs, and they can access real-time information via a mobile phone app. Diaz said this shifts the focus onto critical decision-making, rather than being overloaded with emails and phone calls.

“A digital solution gives us everybody in the one place, instantly,” ASL’s Kelly said. “People do not have to spend the first hour traveling to the crisis control center. The crisis control center becomes their mobile phone, or their laptop, or their iPad. They still go to the crisis control center, but only after the initial management, options, requirements and checklists have been put in place.”

ASL’s passenger airlines use D4H for standard operational issues, such as weather disruption and airport closures. “If an incident happens, people are not going, ‘What’s my password? How do I do this again?’ They’re straight into the system. No issues,” Kelly said.

Blandford has noticed airlines increasingly using D4H for minor incidents like blocked runways, maintenance delays and computer system failures. Another trend is “compounding incidents,” where another event happens before the last one has been reviewed. “Crises are getting smaller and causing impact more frequently,” he said.

DISRUPTION

Disruption from extreme weather events and geopolitical volatility are creating “two huge tailwinds” for digitalization. “Whenever we talk to customers, we ask, ‘What’s your once a day [event]? Once a month? Once a year? Once a career? What are those things for you?’ Over the past 15 years, we’ve watched that change,” Blandford said.

Post-incident, airlines are required by regulators, insurers, the legal system and shareholders to produce an audit trail of the decisions they made as the situation unfolded.

Morgan recalled how 1,875 Delta staff were involved in the emergency response to the 1998 Swissair MD-11 crash, which was operating a Delta codeshare. “Even back then, one person couldn’t keep track of everything going on in a room. And especially today, they can’t keep up, because so much of it comes in through texts, emails, Slack, Teams, etc. There’s no way for one person to keep track,” he said.

Crisis management systems can establish what was known at the time, where the information came from and what decisions were taken. For example, D4H uses a blockchain-like tool called Immutable, which creates a new version every time a record is changed. Different departments like engineering, crewing and operations can input their own data.

Consultancies like Aviem and Kenyon tend to be technology-agnostic, linking their own systems with whichever platform airlines choose to use. There are dozens of crisis management platforms, including Everbridge, F24, Juvare, Noggin and Veoci.

MAINTAINING FAMILIARITY

But airlines need to ensure their staff maintain currency and familiarity with the crisis system they use. “In an emergency environment, you don’t have the time to relearn how to use the system that you saw in the initial training session a year ago,” Allen said. “Have I seen a big uptake in airports and airlines using them? Yes. Have I seen it to be effective? Not really, because they fall back to the things that are more familiar with, like Outlook or WhatsApp.”

This is particularly true for generic systems, designed for big business and the financial sector, which require extensive training. “Some of them are very good. Some of them are rubbish, because they’re not developed necessarily with the aviation sector in mind. Very seldom does aviation go and see how banks are managing crises, because it’s an entirely different world,” Allen said.

However, Allen sees the benefits of digitalization for post-incident inquiries. “It is much easier to analyze data if it’s been recorded electronically,” he said. “When it’s all over, it’s really difficult to get everybody back together again and gather everything together in a meaningful way.” Getting operations back on track takes priority over collating information for a future investigation.

In an emergency, providing an effective response is essential. “Things will go wrong. Your response has got to be fast, it’s got to be accurate, it’s got to be robust, and apart from anything else, it must always be humane,” Kelly said. “Our primary concern in an incident is always the people involved. They’re number one.”