What Startups Can Learn from the Airline Industry’s Approach to Crisis
Having worked at several startups over the years, I’ve seen my share of high-pressure product outages and last-minute scrambles. In those moments, I’ve often thought that startups could learn a lot from industries where lives are literally on the line, like aviation. There’s a simple but profound framework from airline crisis management that I think every startup could benefit from: “Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.”
The Framework: Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.
Airlines train their pilots with these three priorities whenever things go wrong in the air. Each one has a specific, ordered purpose:
Aviate: This is always the highest priority, no matter what happens, keep the plane in the sky. In the tech world, this means “stop the bleeding.” If your system is going haywire or the product is crashing, your number one job is to stabilize. That might mean rolling back a buggy deploy, restoring from a backup, or shutting down a problematic service. It’s all about keeping things from getting worse.
Navigate: Once you’ve stabilized your system, the second job is to regain situational awareness. In aviation, this means figuring out where you are, what the immediate risks are, and how to get back on course. In tech, it’s about understanding what actually went wrong, who was affected, and just as importantly, how you’ll avoid repeating the issue. This is where root cause analysis and postmortem conversations happen.
Communicate: Only after you’re flying again and know where you are should you bring in the Air Traffic Control and inform stakeholders. Communication is important, but it also adds cognitive load, distracts, and can cause confusion if you haven’t sorted out the critical stuff first.
Why This Order Matters in Startups
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the “Aviate” phase of an emergency outage at a startup, only to have someone from leadership pinging me every few minutes for real-time updates. It’s understandable: everyone wants to be in the loop and reassure customers or investors. But here’s the catch, even small mistakes during the truly critical stabilizing phase can turn a bad situation into a catastrophe.
Imagine a pilot, mid-stall, pausing to give status updates to the cabin crew instead of pulling out of the stall. The result is obvious and disastrous. The same applies in tech: dividing the attention of your “pilots” (your engineers) while they’re busy trying to keep the plane in the air puts everything at greater risk.
Putting It into Practice
The next time you face a crisis or outage at your startup, try using the Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. framework:
- First, make absolutely sure the system is stable, no matter who is waiting for an update.
- Second, get clarity on the cause and learn how to move forward.
- Then, and only then, loop in all the stakeholders with clear, actionable information about what happened, how you fixed it, and what comes next.
By protecting your team’s focus during the most critical moments, you give your company a much better chance to not just survive a crisis but come out stronger on the other side.
If it’s good enough for pilots at 30,000 feet, it’s good enough for us at ground level, too.