The customers of an Air navigation service provider (ANSP) are the airlines; its partners are its fellow ANSPs and their supervisory authority. So how much do the public need to know about air traffic management? Nothing, one may say. Wrong: because the people who put their faith in a provider of air navigation services are the passengers aloft and the populations on the ground.

A company that is active solely in the B2B sector and does not directly serve any individuals may wonder why and to what extent it needs to communicate with the public. Is the man on the street really interested in air traffic management? Is he even capable of conducting a discussion with the industry’s specialists on the complex technical issues involved?

At first glance it may seem justified, even sensible, for an ANSP to communicate only with the target groups it deals with in its day-to-day business – groups that have the background to hold their own in such technical discussions. After all, communication resources are finite and need to be used with care, there’s always too much to do, and there’s never enough time. One might think shooting the breeze with interested amateurs would only detract from effectiveness.

Arrogance is dangerous

In practice, though, this technocratic philosophy is counterproductive. It can even be highly dangerous. To illustrate the point, we need look no further than the rapidly-growing influence of pressure groups. Thanks to the internet, even single individuals can do substantial harm to international companies or state organisations in the shortest of times. Dell felt the impact of such activities all too painfully when blogger Jeff Jarvis created his “dell-hell” blog attacking the PC supplier for not providing their promised services. His site swiftly gained a top ranking on the Web’s search engines.

The media, on their part, driven by unrelenting competition, are constantly seeking sensational stories to boost their circulations. And the less the public know about an issue, the easier it is to present wild speculation as hard fact. In the media world, too, a single individual can have a phenomenal effect. Robert Collin, deputy editor-in-chief of the Swedish magazine “Teknikens Värld”, showed, three days after it came onto the market, that the new Mercedes A Class car tended to tip over when cornering. The “moose test” (whose results can, incidentally, be replicated on any vehicle) forced Mercedes to withdraw the car after a sophisticated 18-month launch campaign, modify it at massive cost and finally begin deliveries several months late. Mercedes then had to embark on a phenomenally expensive advertising campaign to repair the damage that had been done to its reputation.

Myriad companies have underestimated the importance of maintaining a dialogue with external target groups, not least in the aviation world. In Switzerland, public and private organisations in the industry have neglected for decades to cultivate a dialogue with their German neighbours: air transport at Zurich Airport was seen as a purely Swiss affair. The result of this attitude is the present deeply unsatisfactory situation at Zurich, which is now forcing the parties involved to take the worst step of all in physical, economic and ecological terms: spreading aircraft noise over a wide area, rather than limiting it to narrow corridors with minimal resident populations.

Overcoming
emotional barriers

If we cast our gaze farther afield, we see that humanity probably has solutions for many major problems whose implementation founders on ideological, political and ultimately emotional barriers. The key issue here is that the all-important decisions are based not on what is objectively better but on what appears to be better. Truth frequently cedes to plausibility in public discussions. The decision-makers are often not technical experts, so the technical issues must first be made understandable to them. This is true of both industrial corporations, whose CEOs often have their background in business administration, and of their political masters who rarely have a background in aviation.

Any ANSP suffers greatly from the public’s inadequate knowledge of its activities in the wake of an accident in which it is involved. It is of little comfort then to hear the company’s peers attest to its high competence levels: public and political debate are long dominated by the views of self-appointed experts in the field. And the relative obscurity with which air navigation services are provided all over the world only add to the mood of mistrust: the fog of the air traffic controller’s world has formed a screen onto which all kinds of fantasies and fears can be projected. Many further parties are likely to jump onto the bandwagon and find reasons for bashing an ANSP considered guilty. This not only does little to nothing to promote air safety; it also hurts and offends people, and absorbs a sizeable amount of energy that could be more productively applied elsewhere.

The question, then, is not whether a dialogue should be conducted with a broader public on the activities of a B2B service provider; it is whether such a dialogue should only be sought in response to a crisis (which could, of course, arise at any time), or should be actively cultivated on an ongoing basis.

Safety is a complex affair

The particular area of activity of ANSPs is typically affected by some further complications. When it comes to safety, the public and the media have a highly distorted view. Only in

case of total absence of any harmful events do people feel safe. After a robbery, a murder or a plane crash they will identify with the victims, i.e. they will imagine what it would have been like if it had happened to them. Safety, then, is regarded as a state of “zero error”, and not as a process of systematically reducing risks.

On top of this, people show a contradictory attitude to safety in their day-to-day lives: many are willing to run far more risks on the road, in their home or with their leisure pursuits than they are exposed to in what they regard as “dangerous” situations such as flying. This all has to do with loss of control: when driving their car, people usually have the (false) impression that they can ensure their own safety; in a plane they are powerless, and their safety is in the hands of the pilots and the air traffic controllers. And this, in turn, creates a certain mistrust of these professional groups.

Every company needs its fans

Any organisation needs to have its network of supporters and sympathisers. Drawing on the stakeholder model of concentric circles, its own board of directors and its supervisory authority (which usually don’t solely consist of technical specialists) are in the middle, followed by its executive management, its management corps, its other personnel, their families, its neighbours, its customers and final consumers, the media, the politicians, the population, its partners, its suppliers and even its competitors. It’s never more vital than in a crisis situation that the politicians should have a good opinion and a relatively accurate understanding of a company, or that word-of-mouth can provide a supportive riposte to any accusations that emerge. In this sense, it does matter how many articles are published that show the company in a favourable light, how often its people give presentations at outside events and how many high school students are offered an insight into the company. All these actions can help maintain such circles of sympathisers and supporters. A good reputation can take decades to establish – but only seconds to be destroyed.

Market research specialists talk of “share of voice” here. If the voice of the company is too soft, or cannot be discerned at all, the orchestra’s other instruments will be heard instead. And they may not be in the most accomplished of hands.

Trust: an essential foundation
for top performance

Public service companies urgently need the confidence and the trust of the broader public. Trust is created through both (perceived) competence and appeal. So trust will not be generated only by imparting technical information; it also requires the creation and maintenance of a favourable overall image.

Trust is important for three reasons:
– first, because the company’s main courses are set (or blocked) by external political bodies, – second, because the prestige that a company's professions enjoy will be a key criterion in the career choices of future new recruits, – and third, because that same prestige can be a key motivator for the company’s employees.
On the last two points, it should be emphasised that this is not a matter of making the employees feel like infallible monarchs. A constant dissatisfaction with the standards already achieved, a ceaseless endeavour to further improve and a desire to “reach for the stars” are vital drivers in any company that needs to ensure safety and security. But these traits, too, will only thrive on a basis of healthy self-confidence.

To those who may be fearful that discussing such complex issues as air traffic management among a broad lay circle will lead to an increase in emotional and unobjective debate, it should be countered that the risk of the latter is ever-present anyway. The question is whether such discussion should only be embarked on in the wake of a crisis, or whether it should be continuously pursued with appropriate respect. The broader public need not know every detail, of course; but the aim should be to communicate a basic technical understanding and appreciation, and to convey the fascination of the air traffic controller’s job (and thereby further raise its standing and appeal). After all, the demands of the air traffic controller’s profession are not unlike those of the pilot’s; and the overall goal is still to lend as much credibility and goodwill as possible to the brand of the ANSP.

The means for achieving this include publications (e.g. like the present Skymag), the company website, media releases that are clear and informative and a reliable media relations unit which provides prompt and clear answers to journalists’ inquiries. First and foremost, though, what is needed are an open attitude to communications, binding communications guidelines (e.g. that all media inquiries are directed to Media Relations) and the serenity to explain the same things time and time again (aren’t we all a little slow on the uptake sometimes?). And what is also required is authoritative and extensive internal information that makes the company’s employees feel they are taken seriously. All of the above demand determination, too: it is a lengthy process.

Any company needs its fan club. Apple has one, and Intel, which does not deliver directly to the final consumer, has raised its brand’s standing by affixing its “intel inside” sticker to laptops and PCs. So how about making air travellers proud of the fact that their ticket names the people who provide for their safety on it, too?