It became a question of not just flight safety, but of health safety: C Leekha

The aviation industry not just in India, but the world over came to a standstill, as the pandemic spread its wings earlier this year. As per the Airport Authority of India, the aviation industry reported a 92% fall in revenue. Despite the odds, Indigo rose up to the challenge and upped its market share from 48% to 55.5% (Source: recent DGC Airport). In this episode of Mrigashira, Charu Raizada is in conversation with C Leekha, Director of Corporate Communications and Brand Reputation at Indigo, to understand how Indigo is using communications to not only bounce back, but also paving the way for revival of the aviation sector.

Listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1DkGhxwwrslUwM4kSQshzn

We all know that the aviation industry has been badly hit in the last few months. Despite the odds, Indigo rose up to the challenge and upped its market share. We are keen to know how communications paved the way to tide over this crisis.

When the pandemic hit us, it took us all a while to understand what’s really happening. The flights were completely shut down and there was no business. But we rose to the occasion very quickly and took it on ourselves to help the nation through this. It became our mandate to be a partner with the government, doing Vande Bharat and chartered flights, transporting people from various locations to their home cities and families. We also started doing a lot of cargo, transporting medical facilities and equipment; perishables, etc. to get our fleet off the ground. From a communication perspective, it became my mandate to ensure that Indigo was heard and seen doing its bit while it was kind of running around the country doing these things. So, for us it was all about the flights we were ferrying, how our employees were coming into the forefront, some of our women pilots talking about their experience. When the whole nation was scared, we really had to get out there and ensure that the company came first. That was the sentiment we promoted, talked about, and communicated through our various endeavours.

When we started flying passengers, we started with a 25% capacity and today we are at almost 70-75%. I think initially, our key focus was to ensure that when people start flying again, they have that complete feeling of trust. Now it became a question of not just flight safety, but of health safety. We actually sat down with doctors, enabling contactless travel for our customers. And that’s something that we are communicating across all channels. Communication has not just been the print media, but all about online and social, ensuring you have an integrated communication plan. Each and every touch point tells the customer, that it’s okay for him or her to travel with us today.

Tell us about some of the major learnings during this journey…

We knew we were hit by a wall, but we were not going to let that ball make us fall down. We chose to learn to climb over that ball and we are slowly doing that. It has been all about human resilience as a companyand more so at a personal level as well.

We went from looking at things from long term to really short term, on a week on week basis, to literally a month on month basis. Another thing is that such dire times bring about a lot of connectivity within people. While we were sitting or working from home, the amount of teamwork this enabled, because everybody came together, helping each other. That’s the spirit I saw in Indigo and I am really proud to say that I felt very happy to be a member of this family. Thirdly, as all of us learned how to work from home, we realised that everything that we did from our office was actually possible from home.

It’s being said that the projected revenue for financial year 2021 is likely to be over 50%. And that means more job losses. So, what steps has the PR team taken to boost employee morale?

From the beginning, a lot of communication was done from top down. Everybody knew exactly what was going on, what steps we were going to take, why we were doing what we were – complete transparency was driven through communications. Similarly, a lot of morale building was also done – we sort of said that our mission was to right now save the nation. So, whatever little bits that we could do, every employee felt very proud. We were the first airline probably in Asia, and the second in the world, who carried blood plasma down south to up north to save a patient’s life. The amount of bonhomie that we felt within the organisation, it keeps the employees to an extent connected. Trainings were organised for people on behavioral emotional quotient so that people were able to share their internal stresses, if any.

What advice would you give PR professionals either working in the aviation sector or wanting to work in the aviation sector?

Maya Angelou is someone I have always revered and loved reading about. As she said – “People are not going to remember what you say, people are not probably going to remember what you do. People will always remember how you make them feel”. So in my life, if there’s one advice I’ve taken is this, it is all about human to human connect. I think if you can build those bridges, 90% of your job is done.

*Edited for length and clarity

(Mirgashira is a podcast for Indian PR and Communication professionals anchored by Radha Radhakrishnan and Charu Raizada. To listen to all episodes visit https://www.digitales.co.in/industry-insights/mrigashira-podcast/)

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