The Allplane Podcast #9 - Airline Communications & PR, with Tamara Bullock, Gareth Edmonson-Jones and Victoria Manakova

An unprecedented situation such as Covid-19 required that we gathered, here on the podcast, an unprecedented line-up of expert professionals to discuss about its consequences for the airline industry, and most particularly in everything that concerns the communication and PR side of it.

So, rather than a one-to-one interview, this episode is a bit unusual in that we have a panel discussion to talk about the hottest topics in airline communications and PR in these very convoluted times.

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Tamara Bullock is the founder of communications consultancy firm Altitude Strategies, which specializes in the aeronautical sector and counts several international airlines and airports among its customers.

Before founding her own communications and pr firm, Tamara held high level communications positions in Europe, the Middle East and the US, making of aerospace and air transport one of her top areas of expertise.

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Victoria Manakova is a communications consultant at Citigate Dewe Rogerson.

Based in Moscow, Russia, Victoria advises some major players in the aviation and aerospace industry, such as Airbus and Dassault, when it comes to their communication and pr activities in the Russian market.

She has also collaborated in the organization of some of Russia’s top commercial aviation events.

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Gareth Edmondson-Jones has a long and broad experience in the airline industry.

He has participated, first hand in the launch of JetBlue and Virgin America, and has also advised airline such as Azul, JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic among other firms in the aviation industry.

Most recently he has taken on the task of managing the communication activities of TAP Air Portugal and Turismo de Portugal in North America.

So, a truly deluxe panel with a broad geographical and company experience, to get some insights about how airlines, airports and the commercial aviation world, in general, are reacting to the current events and engaging with its stakeholders. Who’s doing it right? Who’s doing it not so well?

We are going to talk about these and other questions in this very special episode of the podcast!

Download this episode on:

Apple Podcasts / iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or Stitcher

Things we talk about in this episode:

  • Airline communication strategies during the pandemic

  • Best case examples of communications during the pandemic

  • Not so good examples of communication

  • Communicating about health and safety measures

  • Crisis management when airlines go bust or have to fire staff

  • Government relations and airlines: bailout backlash?

  • The role of technology

Panel Discussion Transcript

(please note that, although we strive to make it as close as possible to the original recording, the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

Hello and Welcome to the Allplane Podcast!

Where, in every episode, we review in depth one particular aspect of the aviation industry with expert professionals. 

You will find lots of other interesting insights and stories about the aviation industry, as well as previous episodes of this podcast, on our website, Allplane.tv

Now...For good and for bad, airlines are a high profile industry when it comes to public awareness

This means that communications and pr have always a super important role

And this is even more true  in moments such as we are living through now

The Covid-19 pandemic poses a number of challenges when it comes to communications

It’s a perfect storm: flight cancellations, groundings, health risks, redundancies...and all of this in a general atmosphere of uncertainty and anxiety

What can airlines, airports and the rest of the aviation industry do to communicate better in these very difficult circumstances?

Who’s doing a great job, who’s doing it not so greatly

Which are the priorities now for the airlines’ communication departments?

Today on the podcast, we have a panel of three amazing aviation communication professionals from different parts of the world, who will share their insights and experiences in this field.

We have Tamara Bullock, who is the founder of US-based Altitude Strategies, and who has also extensive experience in this field in Europe and the Middle East

Victoria Manakova, from the Moscow office of Citigate Dewe Rogerson, a firm that counts among its customers the likes of Airbus and Dassault

And Gareth Edmondson-Jones, who now does communications for TAP Air Portugal and Tourism of Portugal in the US and who has a long experience working in communications for airlines such as JetBlue and Virgin America, where in both cases was part of the initial team that launched them, as well as Azul in Brazil and Virgin Atlantic.

So without further ado, let’s get the conversation started...!

Miquel: Today we have a bit of a different format instead of a one to one interview we have here in the podcast three very experienced professionals in the field of aviation, PR and communications and we're gonna review some of the hot topics in this area at the moment. So let me introduce our speakers today. We have Victoria Manakova, who works at Citigate Dewe Rogerson, in Moscow, working with aviation and aerospace customers. Then we have Tamara Bullock. She is the founder of Altitude Strategies. She works with quite a few major players in the aviation industry, including some airlines. And Gareth Edmondson-Jones that has a long track record as well in the airline industry and he's currently advising TAP Air Portugal and Tourism of Portugal. Before that he was at JetBlue., Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic and Azull in Brazil, so quite a long experience. How are you guys coping with all this very strange situation that we are living through? What has been your experience so far? Who would you like to start? I don't know. Maybe Tamara, you want to be first?

Tamara: Sure. Thank you, Miquel very much for inviting us to this podcast topic, could not be more interesting, more relevant. As we all know, the wider global economy is suffering hugely in the past, has been suffering hugely in the past three months and aviation took probably the hardest hit along with the tourism and restaurants, hotels, and other related industries. Obviously, working on the agency and consulting side, I've seen the decline in the amount of requests for services on the other hand, all of our clients are busy with a constant crisis communication, because since the coronavirus hit, probably in Asia, the first round back in January and then going towards Europe, United States, and now Latin America. The constant mode was change management. And normally you prepare for these kinds of things. And you have all sorts of scenarios planned, whether it's, heaven forbid, a plane crash or high plane hijacking, or if malfunctioning hackers is going into an airline system. This one nobody was really prepared for, not only aviation, but throughout other industries as well, even at the highest level of the global establishment and healthcare systems they were not prepared for it. So I think everyone is learning in the process from airports, airlines manufacturers. We've seen recently a lot of back and forth between airlines and manufacturers, on the delayed orders, on the future canceled orders, some hard talk as well. So, one thing is certain after this period, we will know much more than we did back in February, whether we are in communication or marketing or public affairs or any other function in the industry. And the other thing, it will be a constant change by performance.

Miquel: Okay, so can we say that maybe there's different levels here that the current situation has affected the industry. One of them is obviously the first impact, which is actually managing all the disruption. That was caused by the pandemic, and the border closures and all that, ther airline groundings...Then there's another level which is actually how the airlines are managing the whole situation that has resulted from this and these include things like, for example, how they are handling the refundings, reschedulings, then all the issue with the frequent fliers, also losing, you know, like status and stuff like that today actually, I've seen in an article about the perception of the different airlines how they have been managing this crisis and whether they have improved the perception among the public or actually worsened it. I will post it in the transcript. But I found that quite interesting, not just the first impact, but also looking to the future, there's how you communicate all the changes. That's one of the topics I wanted to touch today is how you communicate all the changes. Is this airline safe? What sort of changes in the experience are we going to expect from now on for example, today, I saw that some airlines are discounting alcohol, for example, on both flights, things like that. How do you see this? Who would like to answer this: Tamara, Gareth, Victoria…?

Victoria: I'd like to jump in and Victoria here. And so the thing about this crisis, a very peculiar thing, is in terms of communication, is basically that all of the players involved in the process work in the industry, they were forced to choose between bad and very bad in terms of communication, because so far we have only some problems. There are tickets cancellation, there are obviously the refunds, that they would have to somehow organize and manage. And obviously cash is being difficult now, so you cannot really give people back money. So it's a very, it's a very tough question. It's a very tough situation they have to tackle. Another thing is, you know, how is it going to be in the future? How are we going to see the size of planes? How are you going to reward people, all that kind of procedures, and that's only on the passenger side because there is it you know, we got to realize that there are a lot of audiences That airlines have to talk to, and the producers, manufacturers, you have passengers, you have partners, you have any kind of people from government to to the end customer, right. And for all of these people, you need to carefully prepare messages. But you see, it's very important to find a balance in your messaging because you cannot be too negative and you cannot be too positive. But what you have to be in my opinion is be consistent, and disclosing information sharing this information and providing people with everything important at the moment and also be transparent because in times like this, what we haven't really spent time like this but in crisis in general. You have to be honest, you have to be transparent even if there are some details that you do not know. At the moment you have to know how to find your way around this, I mean communicating this kind of thing to the audience. So it's all about balance. Unfortunately, airlines for example, have to prioritize their communications and really tackle the incoming messages from people for example, who cannot leave some countries who cannot come back home so they have to answer these people first, for example, on social media when the call centers and then keep on talking to keep on typing different other different requests. So yeah, summing up, I think balance is the key word.

Gareth_ I couldn't agree more with the tone. you saying you never want to be the overly optimistic person looking like they're selling good news. But by the same token, you have to keep up a neutral balance and as you say, just just be truthful and constant and factual. What I've found is that having been on the on both sides of the equation, as an in house, PR person or as a consultant, as I am now, you don't always know the answer straightaway, because...you're not well, it used to be the days were used to find things out in the corridor on the whole when you were when you were bumping into people and chatting. But I suppose everyone's in that same boat now everyone's at home. So we're all sort of finding out things together. But I thought it was fascinating when the Thursday night when President Trump closed incoming visitors from the Schengen area who had spent not even based on citizenship, based on positioning...anyone who had been in the Schengen area for 14, the last 14 days couldn't come to the states on this, there are citizens that obviously surprised us. And that was our first crisis, if you will, because we had a handful of media traveling on different trips, not even on the same trip. So we had, I think, three pairs of media in different parts of the world. So suddenly think, Well, how do we get you home in a hurry? So that that was first and foremost. So, just just in case because we didn't know what was gonna happen after the, after the Saturday flights finished, but ongoing the, you know, it's like taking a class in, in world politics really, because, I mean, it's not just it's not just the health pandemic, but it's obviously the political response to it. So we...Portugal has an interesting outlook in that any Portuguese speaking countries or countries with a large Portuguese community or where we're never shut out. And so if you have a diaspora for you, we'll come back and we communicate that out, only to find that once that would have had happened, another part of government said “Oh, that is true”, except, asterisk, except in the in the form of reciprocity, and so if the US isn't allowing single area visitors in, we can’t allow non essential non dual citizen or residents of Portugal in, so that we're still waiting on. We're basically, we're hoping July 1 now that Europe is traveling within itself, we're hoping that the US and North America can come back from July 1, but but we'll see.

Miquel: So that the band is still in place? European citizens cannot currently fly to the US.

Gareth: Correct. So we're, yeah. So we're waiting on that. Of course, the US Canadian borders still closed as well. So I can't see your being allowed in before Canada. And we just got to note this morning that Canada looks like it's being held till July 21. I'm not sure why that date. So I kind of imagined that Europe won’t be before July 21. Now,

Miquel: But there are still some flights though. I mean, I know personally, because my grandmother got stuck in the US, she was there, the family visit, and she's been there for a few months already…

Gareth: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, flights are still happening. It's just that, inbound, you need to be a US citizen or resident, and vice versa going that way. So you just get it the flights can still happen. It's just an impact on the demand.

Miquel: Yeah, you do communications for TAP Air Portugal that is an airline that has invested heavily in the North American market. One of the major markets, also for transits to Europe...Are there any specific measures on the communication side, for example, I'm thinking about Air France now, that recently has unveiled a sort of brand...I don't know if that's technically a brand...something called Air France Protect, which is basically, they put together all the safety measures the they have been adopting and they have created some nice brochures and some websites and stuff like that and put on a sort of nice logo just to communicate how they are caring about all this. I don't know if there are other airlines doing this type of thing as well…

Gareth: yes, TAP has TAP Clean and Safe...it's on the website as well. It summarizes all the cleaning and hygiene protocols but also how onboard service might have changed now all the meals are packaged obviously and and you know, other other elements of you know, obviously recommending masks etc. So TAP Clean and Safe is their version, which actually takes its name from something Portugal did just before Portugal did, like a good housekeeping, sort of seal of approval in that any hotels or other tourism companies organizations who were following the Portuguese Director General of health COVID protocols would receive a clean and safe endorsement like a stamp. And so, that's been very successful in that some +12,000 plus companies in Portugal have received this stamp showing that they're compliant with the protocols. And that's done. That's done very well. And in fact, Portugal has helped other countries with setting up the same thing. I think they were the first ones out with it. And they've helped, I think, Switzerland and other countries develop the same sort of thing. So, absolutely. To answer your question. Part of our job now is absolutely to explain how the airline and other you know, travel authorities are, are keeping travelers safe and, and I think that's part of our communications to develop trust, because more than ever, travelers will need to be able to trust the airlines and the hotels and the companies that they rely on now...

Miquel: Tamara, Victoria, have you seen similar initiatives in your regions? And with all the clients you've been working with or that you know about?

Tamara: Yeah, almost everywhere, regardless if it's a specific brand, or it's an initiative of, as Gareth mentioned, trying to rebuild trust in safe and healthy traveling, I would say 95% of the airline's introduced this, but they have seen a counter-measure, which I think is kind of interesting to mention as probably a pretty negative communications example from Garuda in Indonesia, where their CEO noticed the passengers are complaining of lack of smiles quote, unquote, so he ordered all the crew to fly without protective equipment in terms of facial masks and so on. So there are all kinds of examples coming up, but the majority of responsible airlines are introducing hygiene and safety measures and that's one of the main customer facing messages that you can hear these days. But also airports are doing similar things, working together with airlines, but also on their end, in terms of facilities, catering retail, that are offered at the airports. One of the main messages is about staying healthy, staying safe and keeping that whether we call it physical or social distance one way or the other.

Miquel: Yes, actually, I had the chance to speak with a crew member of one of the major Gulf airlines and record a podcast with her a few weeks ago and she explained her experience. She was in a repatriation flight, she explained her experience flying in this environment. So, I will post a link in the transcript but you can check on our plane website on the podcast section. If you're interested in this side of things...Yeah, you can see there the point of view of the people that have been in the frontlines.

Tamara: Yeah, that's very important. It's great that you've done such a podcast because I think if we talk about doctors, nurses as heroes, those people who are a flight deck and cabin crews are also some sort of individual heroes, especially during those repatriation flights, doing cargo flights, taking humanitarian aid to different markets during the hardest time of the crisis. And they do deserve the token of attention.

Miquel: And actually, some airlines have launched some initiatives as well. I guess that can be included as well in the communications pack and things like for example, Iberia and Vueling in Spain, I have been giving free tickets to health workers in Russia, an airline called Pobeda, a low cost carrier, actually branded an aircraft with a mask, a painted mask

Tamara: Qatar Airways as well...and I think I've seen some other examples. I cannot recall the airlines...in the States, there were quite a few things, Gareth. You can add if I miss something...I know JetBlue, Delta and, I would say, Southwest if I remember correctly they offered to carry for free health workers around the country.

Gareth: That's right. 

Victoria: Qatar Airways also did something like that away. Yeah, we give away for medical workers for some limited time. 

Miquel: Obviously, there's the actual genuine effort, but also it's a powerful communications action as well...

Victoria: If I may just jump in and our regional discussions level. I think that S7 Airlines is a very good example of how a regional airline or a domestic airline can handle these communications, because they not only posted on their website a very, very thorough article with videos and infographics about how they're providing and going to have safety for the passengers. They have also been pushing it on their social media. And I think it's a great thing that they're doing. And in general if we think not only, you know, country by country airline by airline, the unity in efforts, in bringing the trust back to the industry, made by players, its major players...and by players I mean not only airlines, I mean service providers and associations like IATA for example, we've been putting a lot of effort into making this work not only in terms of, you know, like posting some information...working directly with the regional government and it's just amazing the volume of efforts that has been done simultaneously to bring back the industry, which is to me, you know, the the air transportation industry is a symbol of one of the basic freedoms that we have as humans, which is the freedom of movement. And the fact that in a matter of a couple of weeks or a couple months, we were someone deprived from the freedom not by choice, of course, but by, you know, an unlucky, very unlucky side of the fence. That's horrifying. I think, if you think about it, because it's just put down the entire industry. We're not talking about military aviation or cargo aviation, at the moment we are talking about passengers, right? And the programs that everyone's been launching to bring the truck back, it's just it's just worth mentioning, probably every single one of them and manufacturers have also been on board. For example, as you know, we're working with Airbus, and they've been pushing a very good initiative. Which is keep trusting air travel and they've been releasing sort of infographics features and making calls in regional languages, in Russia, for example, as well. They've been making calls with experts, you know, trying to, to really convey the idea that flying on board is safe in terms of, you know, medical safety, because if you think about it, with all the filters and all the amazing engineering setup of the aircraft inside the cabin, the air is actually several times cleaner after the flight than when you board it. And if you compare the amount of what certain levels of well, I thought was called level of air, clean minutes, correct term professionally But anyways, if you can break back to the to what we have in the offices where the air sometimes takes 20 minutes to get clean. You know, it's surprising that some people...your hear...to fly aboard an airplane because of that, although you are wearing a mask when they are okay sometimes sitting in the same office for several hours without sometimes proper air circulation. But as we say in Russia, “the fear has big eyes” means that whatever fears or doubts you have, they magnify the actual problem from what it really is. And that's what we have to deal with. Here in our communication. Y

Miquel: Yeah, I follow quite a few of the Airbus communication channels on social media, email, etc. And yeah, it's been quite impressive. I've seen this infographic about the filtering system and the aircraft for example...many times! because it's been very, very visible! Some airlines as well I have noticed they've been pretty active for example, Austrian Airlines. It's one of the airlines I've been seeing many times popping up in my social media channels with regular frequency, communicating a lot about all the different actions, whether it was repatriation flights, whether it was reopening routes and flights etc...

Tamara: And, Austrian, Miquel, is a good example because their CEO is a very communication-savvy guy. And I think many times as we all know, it does come from the top regardless of how much we can advise our clients or internally C-suite to do certain things in terms of communications, if they don't have that sort of inclination, and they don't feel that's important for the wider strategy. It's really hard to achieve results and I think he likes his own role and is a really good example of an European airline CEO, who communicates and communicates very well.

Gareth: And honestly, Victoria, I have to commend you and Airbus Because I couldn't agree more, the news about the filtration system on board has been seen everywhere. And you know, with TAP being an airline that only flies Neo long haul currently, that message that the air is as clean or cleaner than a hospital was well received and it helps us do our work very easily. So much appreciate it for all that.

Miquel: Yeah. And also, another thing that Victoria mentioned, is the concept of travellers’ freedom. That's also a line that the industry should be pushing more. I have a colleague, he's an entrepreneur, he has a technology company that does onboard retail, and he posted on social media that travel is the business of freedom. I think that's aligned...this association with freedom...is very powerful…!

Gareth: Freedom with responsibility...I mean, I I was glad to see today that US carriers, and I'm sure around the world if they don't already, started doing forced masks on board because, certainly, in the states freedom can often feel a little bit selfish. It's about the one person as opposed to the community. And it drives me crazy to see people bought a plane and then take their masks off. And just it's obviously it's just...a selfish act. So I agree if freedom with responsibility is the way to go, because we have to look out to everybody, you know, we're responsible for our community. And if that community is the onboard passengers, it's  twinning, both those things together, I think…

Miquel: Indeed...And also, there's another aspect that we haven't really touched but it's been also pretty important during this period, and it's actually all the airlines that have been in trouble, that have basically been having redundancies, downsizing...Have you seen here any particular cases instances of good practices that you would like to commend?

Tamara: Well, I think Turkish Airlines did pretty well. Now I'm not going into the whole story of who is subsidized, who is not...now everyone is going to be subsidized. There is no other way for airlines to survive even one Lufthansa where you had Carsten Spohr  saying about two months ago “no way how we're going to take any money from the government”. Now they had to give in and accept 25% ownership by the German government. So in Turkey, what Turkish Airlines did, they made a commitment to them, I guess it looks like realistic commitments and not to have any redundancies, this and next year, and then they will reevaluate and look further down the line in terms of business planning, but they made a kind of concrete decision and it was transparently communicated to their staff as well as other reductions in service were communicated to the customers on the other hand, we had to some of the Gulf airlines, going through redundancies, which were, obviously, pretty necessary and unavoidable, but doing it in a pretty clumsy way, especially with the Emirates where some major grim rumors came out about people even committing suicides. I hope that was not true. It was never clarified to the end. But the way those redundancies were done, it was not strictly planned for and some of them were done in the group meetings. And these are extremely sensitive times for everyone, for staff for passengers for management, so there has to be some strategy. I think it all boils down to crisis planning. When we had 9-11 I don't think any of us back in the days whoever was working in the PR comms industry plan for 9-11 scenario. I think the same thing applies here. None of us really plan for the global major pandemic scenario which crash is completely one or two or three industries. So in the future that will have to change as communicators have to plan more carefully, including this internal segments of staff engagement. So layoffs and also Investor Relations, which are also a big part of our job to the certain extent.

Miquel: And also government relations. Because here we've got some cases as well of airlines that were before the pandemic were already kind of on the brink. And the pandemic kind of provided a sort of excuse to to claim some government bailouts and support. Thinking here...the case of Alitalia, for example.

Tamara: Well, Alitalia has nine lives, I think!

Miquel: To another degree, Norwegian as well, it's an airline that was in a complicated situation already before that happened. Well, in those cases, in a way, I guess it's been made easier to communicate the government bailout, it would have been harder to justify, I guess, In normal situations, but now I mean, if everyone is getting it…

Tamra: Yeah, the cash reserves were the problem. I mean, know where airlines were not transparent towards the industry bodies, the government...And then when the bailouts came in the States, they were all waiting in line to get some money from Trump's administration, whether right or wrong, but that was the case. And if you are operating as a solid business, financial experts say that you always have to have six months of cash reserves, ready to pay all the salaries, all the expenses, and then you can start sort of complaining of financial trouble.

Miquel: Gareth, I don't know if in the US, where there is the experience of the previous bailout, the banking bailout It was 2008 generated a lot of controversy. I don't know in this case, all these bailouts for airlines...have they generated controversy as well?

Gareth: Yes and no. small pockets of it. I mean, people always complain about everything right? but it hasn't hasn't been major news. I think it's, for the most part, people understand that. business requires airlines and for business to come back airlines, they do exist. So I think, begrudgingly, no matter how much money they're making beforehand, begrudgingly, people say, “Well, we need them around. So that's fine”. So that makes sense. But then, I was just thinking what you're saying about 9-11? And how, how similar it is, but it's kind of a longer version. But when you look at the many of the communications, it's  simple, has a lot of similarities. We were at JetBlue during 9-11, and it wasn't JetBlue hadn't even had one full calendar year of flying, when that happened. And of course, being based in New York. That was sort of the worst of all situations. And that was that was actually the last time I woke up to a flight and saw there was no one on it. Five minutes ago, I thought, Where is everybody? Oh, that's right. But as the communication then, as it is now is, you know, we know that there are many reasons you don't want to fly. It's not dollar based, you know, you're not you're not flying, because you're waiting out for a sale. There are big reasons you're not flying and as a brand that you trust. We have to say, you know, we're ready for you when you're ready. So, you know, here's how we've cleaned, here's that we've prepared. Here's how we're flying, but we're ready for you when you're ready. TAP has returned to service this month, just so far with one route, a Newark, New York to Lisbon, but in July, they're adding back service to Boston, Miami, Toronto, and actually adding three new routes which is I think, is I'm heard of I haven't heard any other airline, inaugurating three new routes next month. So...

Miquel: Gareth, I remember that I got the press release from top announcing the new routes. And that was just in the peak of the worse of the epidemics and I thought “wow! These people are bold!”.

Tamara: Yes, Wizz Air did something similar yesterday, they announced up to nine new European routes out of Belgrade. I think they're trying to use this moment where the major governments on airlines are figuring out what to do next and how to put a strategy to win more markets in Europe. So they are a positive example, just like TAP.

Gareth: Interesting. So ultimately, it's going to depend on demand, obviously, because I mean, right now TAP is planning to be back at 50% of network this autumn, as it was pre-COVID So, with furloughs and laying staff off, obviously, you know, the faster demand comes back the faster staff come back. But so it's really...we got it, we got to see how a second wave may play out and how traveling confidence comes back. But if people...it seems that people get it's like the boiling frog...people are shocked about something they get used to it and with precautions and you know taking all the right protocols. Hopefully we can safely build travel back up again and demand and keep people employed and and return to some normalcy, but it’ll take a little while, obviously...a long while.

Miquel: Well, let's hope so! I mean, let's hope it recovers. And if it takes a shorter time than many are expecting, but of course, it's we need to plan for the worse and expect the best. Are there any other initiatives in other parts of the world that have caught your eye?

Gareth: I hate to say it's not an airline example but I thought the classiest mass layoff was Airbnb. The letter from you know, Brian, is the CEO, to the employees was incredibly well done and I understand from a communication standpoint it was because the bricks came down on him beforehand when they upset all the hosts, but so so they had to get this one right but I was very impressed with how they handled a significant layoff of their employees. From a communication standpoint, it was very nicely well done.

Tamara: And Gareth, the platform they built for those who are laid off...They basically build a website with their CVs for all the other potential employees to come in and we can choose if they have any candidates that would fit the profile. And I think that it's a travel industry one way or the other, this example could be used in the future by airlines as well and could be a good case study for planning mass redundancies.

Gareth: That's right

Miquel: Good stuff. I'm gonna check it out. And if I can find some link to it…

Tamara: I will send you the link…

Miquel: okay! I will post it on the transcript. I use this opportunity to remind everyone that with the podcast, I'm gonna be posting as well a list of resources, things that we have commented here.

Tamara: And I think also if I may add Miquel on, we talk about good examples. Obviously us is the largest market,with China and so on...Delta always have their communication right in terms of addressing people issues, even when it's grim when it's difficult. Ed Bastian and his team find the right messaging, how to weather the storm and how to lay out the alternatives and solutions, especially in the staff engagement area. And as we mentioned, Alexis from Austrian Airlines is pretty good at it as well.

Miquel: Very good. So, two more references to check out. And I think it's, we're getting to the time of wrapping up this very interesting conversation. We'll see how the situation evolves, hopefully for the better. And let's see if we can maybe comment again in a few months time, and things are completely different and things have gone better than everyone expected and we are traveling again.

Tamara: we will travel again, it's no different, it will be probably more expensive for the next six months or a year or so. But we will travel again and I think ideation is such a big part of every country's GDP, that it's absolutely impossible not to invest in its recovery input all the efforts for this sector to come back on its feet.

Victoria: a very good point, which we somehow meant to touch upon is actually the digital part of things because it's the technology that allowed us all to stay safer in this time. And despite the huge costs in sending for different areas, for airlines for the subcontractors anyone digitization of all the processes is probably a potential area of investment because in the longer term, it can cut costs. And if we look purely on the financial side of things, but it also allows people to have less contact between each other and physical contact to take it let's take as an example, again S7 and Domodedovo, which is an airport in Moscow or they have already installed a lot of check-in counters and luggage check in. So you don't have to, you know, communicate with the staff too much. This kind of technologies that allows everything or almost everything to be touchless, it's probably where the future was going anyway. But this the pandemic actually speeding up the implementation. And I think we will see more of this not only on the passenger side, but maybe on the more sort of obscure side that passengers usually don't see such as, you know, payments for the refuelling which will not take you know, the transactions maybe will not take that much time with different new different types of payment being introduced, such as blockchain and all the different possibilities. There's definitely going to be more interesting topics to be discussed. And the pr professionals will have many more opportunities to communicate things like this. Who knows?

Miquel: This is an area I follow very closely. It's one of my areas of interest, or the intersection between technology in aviation. And I must say, yes, there is a very dynamic ecosystem of startup companies that are designing new features, new systems to make all the travel process more agile. And to automate many different steps, many different stages of the travel cycle and the passenger experience. For sure that's gonna get now a big push, I guess, generate another wave as well of startups trying to ride this trend, but it was already a very active ecosystem that's for sure. Alright, so I think we can leave it here for today. As I said, we can maybe reconvene in a few months time and see how things are going. In the meantime, well, thank you so much, everyone...from LA, Brazil, Belgrade...it's a truly global global podcast this episode! 

All: Okay, thank you very much!

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