VIRGIN AUSTRALIA: Corporate affairs head demonstrates double standards on social media

This story was reported by Hannah Wootton, in the AFR. As you will see, there are now deleted posts involved, making this difficult to verify independently. However, the AFR is a journal of record and demonstrates traditional journalistic ethics, so I am inclined to trust their reporting.

Since he’s Virgin Australia’s chief corporate affairs officer, you would expect Christian Bennett to have a handle on his company’s public image. I mean, he is the one who has been known to implement social media sanctions on staff for relatively minor infringements of the company’s social media posts policy. We are talking cabin crew sharing photos from overnighters, or employees highlighting their sometimes quirky hobbies on LinkedIn.

Different rules

Yet the rules seem to skip a rung of the ladder. Last week, instead of fronting up with other Virgin Australia staff to a Senate inquiry into Labor’s proposed consumer protections, Bennett was vacationing in the USA.

On LinkedIn, he vented his frustrations with Airbnb over a cancelled booking using terms like ‘whoop ass’.

Back in the Senate, Virgin was arguing that customers shouldn’t expect more compensation for cancellations and delays. Let me just remind you that Virgin Australia is currently sitting AU$93 million in unredeemed COVID-19 travel credits. They expire this month. Labor’s Josh Dolega pointing out that Bennett’s post was “tone deaf” and something about glass houses and projectiles.

Distancing

Virgin’s chief customer officer Andrew Cleary distanced the company from its employees views. Pity that such a distinction, doesn’t apply to rank-and-file staff, who get sanctioned for far more innocuous posts.

Lets not forget that Bennett received $1 million in Virgin shares in last year’s IPO. No disciplinary action for him over his Airbnb outburst or other non-aviation posts. The LinkedIn post has been deleted. Apparently the Airbnb issue was resolved, unlike customers with expiring travel credits they can’t use by the end of June.

2PAXfly takeout

Did somebody say goose/gander?