Campbell Wilson stood in a gray suit before a camera last week to read a carefully worded statement about the plane operated by Air India, the company he leads, that had crashed hours earlier in Ahmedabad, India, with 242 people aboard.
His remarks immediately drew criticism. Social media users said he appeared cold and lacking in empathy.
Soon after that, another critique emerged: Much of Mr. Wilson’s speech was identical to one given five months earlier by Robert Isom, the chief executive of American Airlines, after a deadly crash in Washington.
The similarities in the two statements are striking. Karthik Srinivasan, a communications consultant in Bengaluru, India, posted transcripts on social media showing that many of Mr. Campbell’s words had exact parallels in Mr. Isom’s.
“First and most importantly, I’d like to express our deep sorrow about these events,” Mr. Isom said in the video published Jan. 29. On June 12, Mr. Wilson began: “First and most importantly, I would like to express our deep sorrow about this event.”
“This is a difficult day for all of us at American Airlines,” Mr. Isom continued. Mr. Wilson said: “This is a difficult day for all of us at Air India.”
Mr. Isom said, “I know that there are many questions, and at this early stage, I’ll not be able to answer all of them. But I do want to share the information I have at this time.” Mr. Wilson said exactly the same thing, except he didn’t say “early,” and in one instance he used “we” instead of “I.”
“Anything we can do now, we’re doing,” they promised. Both said their companies had “set up a special help line,” would “continue to share accurate and timely information as soon as we can” and were “working around the clock” to support “passengers, crew and their families.”
Many who responded to Mr. Srinivasan’s post expressed anger and distrust at the airline. The outcry over the remarks has added to the challenges facing Air India as investigators work to understand what caused its London-bound jet to crash moments after takeoff, killing all but one person on board and dozens on the ground.
“People found it insensitive because it just doesn’t make sense based on common sense to plagiarize a speech when you’re supposed to showcase empathy,” Mr. Srinivasan said in an interview.
Public relations specialists said that it was common to see similar structures and elements in statements from companies dealing with crises. But they said it was surprising to see one copy another verbatim.
Some experts were more sympathetic to Mr. Wilson and his staff because airlines, like other companies, often rely on past examples when responding to disasters.
“Perhaps Air India took the lessons too literally,” said John Bailey, who has advised about 70 airlines and written crisis communications guidelines for the International Air Transport Association, a trade body.
Air India did not address the plagiarism accusations in a statement responding to criticism of Mr. Wilson’s remarks. But it acknowledged that it had drawn examples from other crashes. The company said it had “studied many airlines’ immediate post-accident statements to identify the clearest, most concise and effective way to convey time-sensitive, critical information at a moment of immense human trauma.”
It said the emotion in Mr. Wilson’s statement was “as genuine as you would expect in the minutes following such a tragic event.”
After a crash, airlines may want to avoid admitting fault or getting ahead of investigators when communicating with the public. Like plane manufacturers and agencies involved in an air disaster, airlines are expected to be circumspect about what they say and let the officials leading the investigation share details.
Mr. Bailey said that Mr. Wilson conveyed what he needed to despite the pressure, in what was likely one of the worst moments of his career. Mr. Wilson, a New Zealander who started a low-cost carrier in Singapore, was hired in 2022 to lead a turnaround at India’s long-struggling flagship carrier.
“What I saw was a guy who was absolutely very empathetic and struggling with his emotions, because that’s the reality,” Mr. Bailey said.
Some public relations specialists were more critical.
“It’s lifting someone else’s words,” said Jo Scard, a communications specialist in Canberra, Australia, whose past clients included an airline. She noted that nearly five hours passed between the crash and Mr. Wilson’s video statement.
“They could’ve managed it in a different way,” she said.
N. Chandrasekaran, the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, which owns Air India, said in an interview broadcast on Thursday that the company was not focused on Mr. Wilson’s words but on meeting the needs of those affected by the crash.
“I think we can split hairs over the words,” he told Times Now, an English-language news channel in India.
But later in the interview, he acknowledged the anger over the identical remarks.
“I have heard about this,” he said. “I have not analyzed it word by word, but this is something we’ll look into.”
