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POOR COMMUNICATIONS DEEPEN AIRLINE CRISIS

By Volker K. Thomalla

Air transport is currently undergoing its worst crisis ever. The fact that responsibility for this situation does not lie solely with the brutal attacks of 11 September in the USA is common knowledge and has been sufficiently publicised. In the case of many airlines, errors made in the past have now caught up with those responsible in a dramatic fashion and are contributing to the severity of the crisis. Thus Swissair, Sabena and Midway have only been propelled more quickly towards the economic abyss to which they would have drawn dramatically near even without the events of 11 September.

General political uncertainty is bad for any business. A feeling of uncertainty will spread much faster than a feeling of confidence, which takes years to build up. When uncertainty spreads around the world, our global economy does not merely hiccup, it plunges into a crisis.

The air travel industry is only reinforcing the uncertainty of its passengers by what, in my opinion, amounts frequently to poor communications. The bulk of the airlines put a stop to their advertising activities after 11 September. Advertisements from airlines are hardly to be seen any more. Instead, in the business columns of the daily newspapers, the only airline stories to be found are all about route cutbacks, redundancies and profit warnings.

This form of communication is ill suited to achieve what is necessary now: to win back passenger confidence and do something to check the hysteria that is gathering pace. When large commercial enterprises continue to ban their staff around the world from undertaking any business travel, then this suggests either that business trips were made in the past that were not necessary or else that the companies are unable to perform an analysis of the threat that is appropriate to the situation. Here the airlines need to raise their voices and show that security is the top priority in the industry. The industry is working at full stretch to develop solutions for security problems, as our story in this issue shows.

Airlines which now remain silent should not be surprised if their passengers at some point begin to forget them. The industry at present finds itself walking a delicate tightrope: on the one hand it needs to show the public at large that it is addressing the security issue so as to ensure that atrocities such as those of 11 September cannot occur again, while on the other hand it cannot give much details about the security measures it is taking, as that would simply be to hand the potential hijackers and murderers the means to surmount the security precautions.

Time is pressing. People will be working out their holiday plans for next summer over the winter. The air transport industry must now initiate a communications offensive or risk the holiday plans of large sections of the population passing them by. It is always better to adopt a "We are doing what we can but are just not talking about it" attitude than to duck the issue and hope the crisis will sort itself out all by itself.

Against this background the flight taken by Lisa Beamer on Friday, 19 October 2001 is all the more outstanding as an example that should be followed. Lisa Beamer is the pregnant widow of a passenger who was on board United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked on 11 September and crashed near Pittsburgh. Ms. Beamer flew on board the flight from Newark to San Francisco, now renamed flight UA081, and justified her journey by saying she wanted to show that she would not allow fear to deter her from flying. In an interview she said, "We must not allow ourselves to become prisoners of terrorism." Does this not apply to all of us, and especially to all those who work in the air travel business? The example of this brave lady shows how one can find a way around a crisis. I take my hat off to Lisa Beamer.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 12/2001