Hearts & Minds: Gone but not forgotten. Heathrow closure has disappeared from the headlines, but reputational risks remain

The headline in Management Today is arresting: ‘Did Heathrow’s shutdown prove that bad press no longer matters?’

A week ago, Heathrow closed for 18 hours due to fire at a substation. The media went into overdrive, hailing the chaos a ‘fiasco’ and ‘global humiliation’.

Then, just as quickly as the airport returned to normal and the furore ended. It was raised in parliament on the Monday, an inquiry was announced and that was all. Which begs the question: does a short burst of negativity cause lasting reputational harm to a brand, is the ever-accelerating news cycle a godsend for PR disasters? Speaking to agencies, Management Today concludes the answer is yes and no. Yes, the damage can be meaningful; no, the company should not assume they’ve heard the end of it.

That must be correct. In Heathrow’s case, the story was not simply about a power cut, it concerned resilience at one of the world’s busiest airports. Heathrow was suddenly found to be horribly fragile. Despite the short-attention span, that impression, of a flagship piece of infrastructure unable to cope, sticks.

Merely because the closure disappeared from the headlines does not mean it has gone away. Should there be a repeat, it will reappear. It doesn’t need to be of similar magnitude – any glitch will see the shutdown resurrected. Nor does it have to involve Heathrow – any halt in services of anything anywhere due to a lack of backup, future power cuts, will provoke further mention. Don’t forget either, the inquiry has not even cranked into operation.

Heathrow should ready itself for long reads, podcasts, documentaries, reconstructions. While the airport stressed a return to business as normal, while it was shut the dread label of ‘crisis’ was repeated everywhere. Inject human drama into that and there is scope for further visits. The Post Office scandal became a min-series; the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview occurred in 2019 but the fallout still resonates.

It is far from over. Heathrow must plan accordingly and try and shape and own the narrative for what is bound to be a long tail.

With the immediacy and never-ending insatiability of digital, online and 24-hour news, the temptation is to believe that the old saying of newspapers being ‘tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ is more relevant today than ever. But as Warren Buffett also said, ‘it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.’

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.