For all the heroics of pilot Chesley Sullenberger and the happy ending for all the survivors of the ill-fated US Airways flight that splashed-down in the Hudson, the parent corporation directing that flight does not earn a similar fate. Though US Airways did not completely fail the crisis, they did fail at web crisis communications.

Within moments of the plane landing in the Hudson, ferries began to redirect their sterns to the partially submerged wing tips of the big jet airliner; the only quicker response was the one by users of Twitter. The tweets were ringing through the Twitter website and PDAs across the planet faster than CNN could break the story. A simple lesson, really: the Web has become the ultimate quick response system in times of crisis. Though this lesson has been re-learned many times (the bombings on Mumbai are just one of countless examples), US Airways still had not learned the lesson.

Amongst the flurry of tweets were those from myself, who working from the greatest of distances, my building in Vancouver, was able to communicate more about the story than the airline itself. And while the Internet continues to prove itself amongst the fastest of communications channels, US Airways still did not have a response or a message on their website two hours after their accident. I was watching – and the company posted no message on their home page, and none to their press room.

Read my full column US Airways fails web crisis communications