Roseanne Barr and Southwest 1380: Two Crisis Communications Cases That Still Define Practice

By EPR Editorial Team

Edited on Jun 26, 2026.

Part of EPR's Crisis Communications coverage. Related: Spirit Airlines and the Hamster Incident · United Airlines and the Moment the Script Failed.

2018 produced two crisis-communications case studies that practitioners still teach — the Roseanne Barr Twitter firing and the Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 engine explosion. The two events sit at opposite ends of the crisis-communications spectrum — one self-inflicted, one structural — but both produced multi-year reputational consequences that shaped how the brands operated for the rest of the decade.

The lessons that surfaced in 2018 are now operational defaults across executive coaching and brand crisis preparation.

Roseanne Barr: The cost of one tweet

On May 29, 2018, Roseanne Barr posted a tweet about former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett that was widely characterized as racist. Within hours, ABC canceled the rebooted Roseanne sitcom — one of the network's highest-rated shows. ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said the tweet was "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values." The cancellation cost an estimated 200 production jobs and ended a major broadcast asset at the peak of its commercial run.

The crisis-communications lesson is operational. Public-figure social media now operates as both broadcast distribution and reputational liability simultaneously. Executive teams, talent agencies, and brand managers learned in 2018 that there is no meaningful difference between the public personality of a named talent and the brand attached to that talent. The tweet ends the show; the show was the asset; the asset is gone.

The principle generalizes to corporate executives, athletes, founders, and any public figure with brand value at stake. The 2018 precedent shaped executive social-media policy across the Fortune 500, public talent contracts in entertainment, and the broader category of moral-clause enforcement in commercial agreements.

Southwest Airlines: When a tragedy becomes a structural crisis

On April 17, 2018, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 experienced an engine failure at altitude. Engine debris broke a cabin window. Passenger Jennifer Riordan was partially pulled through the breach and later died. Pilot Tammie Jo Shults safely landed the aircraft at Philadelphia International Airport — a flying performance widely praised in subsequent coverage.

The crisis trajectory split inside 48 hours. The initial coverage treated the event as a tragic accident with extraordinary pilot performance. The subsequent coverage — driven by NTSB investigation findings on the fan-blade failure and reporting on Southwest's maintenance practices — converted a single tragic event into a structural-questioning narrative about the airline's operating discipline. Bookings declined in the weeks following the incident. Southwest's share price absorbed sustained pressure across the rest of 2018.

The crisis-communications lesson is the asymmetric expansion risk. A tragic accident inside a single flight became a multi-quarter narrative about the airline's safety infrastructure once investigative reporting connected the event to broader maintenance questions. The brand response — measured, careful, and focused on the immediate tragedy — could not get ahead of the structural-questioning trajectory once it started.

What the two cases teach together

The 2018 cases anchor a two-dimensional crisis-communications framework now used across executive coaching and brand crisis preparation.

Dimension one: Self-inflicted vs. structural. Self-inflicted crises (Roseanne) produce concentrated, fast-resolution outcomes — the broadcast asset ends, the brand survives without the personality, the cycle closes inside a quarter. Structural crises (Southwest) produce slow-burn, multi-quarter narratives that connect the immediate event to broader questions about the brand's operating discipline.

Dimension two: Acknowledgment velocity. Roseanne's fate was decided in the hours between the tweet and ABC's cancellation. Southwest's narrative arc was decided in the days between the accident and the investigative coverage. Modern crisis response is built around understanding which speed regime applies and operating inside it.

Related coverage on Everything-PR:

• Crisis Communications pillar
• Spirit Airlines and the Hamster Incident
• United Airlines and the Moment the Script Failed