ORDER ARTICLE PERMISSIONS/REPRINTS/OFFPRINTS/TEACHING NOTE
To order permissions to include this article in textbooks, edited volumes, course booklets, online/digital course packs, etc., and/or to order multiple individual hard copies for classroom use, please contact the copyright owners, NeilsonJournals' Publishing Editor, Peter Neilson at pneilson@neilsonjournals.com
Can Avelion Airways Maneuver CrowdStrike Outage Turbulence?
Sandeep Puri
Asian Institute of Management, Philippines
Rameshwar Dubey
MBS School of Business, Montpellier, France and Liverpool Business School, UK
Sadaf Taimoor
triOS College, Toronto, Canada
Volume 18: 2025, pp. 61-68; ABSTRACT
On July 19, 2024, global travel nose-dived into chaos following the CrowdStrike outage.
As numerous computers displayed blue error screens, resulting in grounded flights across multiple
airlines,2 Avelion Airways3 (Avelion) was also straddled with managing stranded passengers,
compensation claims, and scheduling disruptions. To minimize damage, maintain stakeholder trust,
facilitate quick recovery, and protect reputation, Avelion must implement a crisis communication
framework: pre-crisis planning (risk assessment, stakeholder identification, business continuity
drills, etc.), effective and rapid response (centralized communication, transparency, multiple
channel communication), and post-crisis evaluation and long-term resilience measures. The case
examines how the incident disrupted operations, revealed critical vulnerabilities, and exposed risks
to the aviation industry because of its increasing dependence on interconnected technologies and
lack of preparedness to address crises from unprecedented circumstances. Instructors can use this
case to discuss a company’s crisis communication strategy following a disruption such as the
CrowdStrike outage.
Keywords: customer trust, crisis communication strategy, IT system vulnerabilities, operational
resilience, interconnected technology risks.
