The Moral Side of Certain Events

Ethical Dilemma and Morality

Acting ethically means following moral goals endorsed by the particular moral system. Goals set are usually straightforward; saving a patient’s life is basic moral for a doctor, adjusting these morals on time of crisis or difficulty could cause conflict between the moral objective and escalate to a position of needing to choose between the moral and compelling goal in an ethical manner. For example; the decision a doctor makes to save life of the mother or baby during risky births requires doctor to look into all aspects while making an ethical decision. Situation where moral goals struggle and require managers to make decision are known as ethical dilemma. Manager often confronts situation with ethical dilemma, and are required to make a decision that distinguishes the right from wrong are important issues. But the real issue is how does it affect the end client, back offices, market structures?’, this essay discusses whether the technical issue in the airplane should be delayed or disclosed to external parties which is an ethical dilemma that the managers need to sort by taking a decision looking into the four ethical decision-making models: moral rights, utilitarianism, justice and practical.

Human Life Above All

This essay stands against delaying any announcement regarding technical issues in the airplane, following utilitarianism.The Justice rule applies that the negative and positive externalities need to be equally distributed among all the stakeholders. When taking a decision, managers need to consider looking into both, external and internal stakeholders and evaluate the consequences of taking that decision and whether the decision is reasonable and fair for all stakeholders. Delaying the announcement would temporarily keep manufactures under the safe blanket keeping them in safe zone and buying them time but the most of the costs and risks would be pushed onto the passengers, delaying announcement wouldn’t fulfill the main concern of airplane safety that is lives of the passengers, a case similar took place on February 4, 2015 of TransAsia Airways Flight that crashed due to problems in the engine 2 costing death of 57 lives onboard mainly because of “Lack of situation awareness” as suggested. Applying this rule can avoid loss of lives, and allow passengers and airlines to substitute the aircrafts at sooner stage. Airlines stand in the base as distributors, delaying announcement of technical issue could affect their reputation in a negative manner and increment the harm received by the airline in case of a crash due to malfunction in airplane resulting to break in the passengers trust in travelling with that particular airline, in long term could lead to loss due to the impact of airplane crash resulting in drastic decline in price. As suggested “We don’t have to have 300-plus people die every time to find out that something is unreliable”, it would be difficult for the managers to apply this rule as not all stakeholders would be fairly treated. Moral right is an approach that protects and respects the code of conduct by which the society is based. Manufacturers supply the aircraft, but it is the other stakeholders that revolve and make use out of the airplane, hence they keep the fundamental rights of acknowledging any technical issue in the airplane.

What Needs to be Done

Passengers have the right to know if the airplane they use for travelling has any technical issue, they also are compelled to know if the airplane used is not faulty to travel in and also that they receive service as described and expected, that is to reach to their destination safely. Airlines hold the responsibility of the lives of passenger once passenger on boards the airplane, which is not acquired if manager delays the announcement. Passengers have the right to sue the airline under the international convention which has been adopted into Australian law as well in case of breach in airlines duty to protect the safety of the passengers, this has been the case for 3 airlines that failed to provide safety to passengers, delaying the announcement could lead to substantial money loss for the manufacturer, which eventually could lead to halt in production as well.

Unaware of the technical issue in the airplane could cost airlines their brand image and reputation, airlines have the right to know any faulty item or parts, using this rule allows airlines to gain the right to understand the means from which they provide services to their customer (passengers of the airplane) and take ethical decision in adjusting in case of an emergency or sudden changes.

The practical rule is one of the models to ethical decision making, this rule implies that a manager has no hesitation delivering the decision to stakeholders outside the company, because it is in general the most accepted in the society. While taking decision on the basis of this rule, the manager would have to consider whether the society would delay or announce the technical issue in the airplane.

Disclosing the technical issue and applying this rule would allow the managers of the both, the aerospace manufactures and airlines to make amendments that arised as the consequence of the technical issue in the airplane. Airlines could compensate the passengers with new tickets to a substitute airplane departing, or provide refund in case of a delay or cancellation of flight departure. Airlines can reschedule departure time and replace few spare aircraft to ones with technical issues to keep the system operating. Disclosing would also release some pressure of manufacturers as they could replace the faulty airplanes and promote the other airplanes as substitutes while working on solution to fix the technical issue, at the same time not disappointed other stakeholders which would include airlines (distributors). External stakeholders tend to be satisfied when they have the knowledge to all their surrounding and operations taking place, announcing the technical issue might increase the distributors and customer’s trust and reliability towards the manufacturers with the fact that technical issue was pointed without any accidents taken place.