The premise of the show is simple – you get to see a real airline in action and follow what happens to their customers.  Now in the UK, this show, with EasyJet, does well and EasyJet comes off looking great.   For them, it is a form of publicity that does well.

Tiger Airways is Australia’s #4 carrier (after Qantas, Virgin Blue and Jetstar) and a relatively new player on the scene.  They probably saw the Airways show as a way in which they could rapidly build their brand in the Australian market and differentiate themselves from the other played.

However, this seems to have backfired and backfired badly.  Tiger does not come off well in this show.  For 30 min we saw passenger after passenger stranded at Melbourne airport as flights were cancelled or delayed.  Families were not compensated and the Tiger staff came across as condescending and arrogant.  In once case, a group of people who needed to get from Melbourne to Brisbane resorted to driving … 20+ hours door to door.  Any which way you cut it, this is not good PR for the fledgling airline.

The bottom line is if you are going to use PR, make sure you control the complete process (as best as you can) and that the down side is minimised as much as possible.  In addition, you want to make sure that you control who from your company is in front of the camera.  They are the face of your business to the world.  PR can be very powerful and very cost effective (just ask Richard Branson) however, the downside can be equally damaging.  Tread carefully.