In Cautious Defence of Air Peace, By Duke of Shomolu

Air Peace has been in the news recently.

Influential actress Funke Akindele shot a clip of their passengers allegedly stranded at the airport in the UK and this was immediately followed by another clip from an influencer decrying the whole situation.

Funke’s clip remains the most damaging, as she leveraged valuable goodwill to significantly harm Air Peace’s corporate reputation.

She not only stopped there, she pulled in our ‘mothers’ as she showed the elderly going through harrowing experiences.

Another blogger also swore in his life never to ‘buy an Air Peace ticket, recommend it to anyone or encourage anyone to buy the ticket’.

This was after Air Peace allegedly had reached out to him for details, and after he provided the details, he allegedly received threat letters from Air Peace’s legal team, threatening to report him to UK authorities, according to the blogger.

Air Peace is reeling from all these reputational hits and has been shrugging them off and growing despite it all.

It can afford to ignore the local market as they have the size and little or no competition, as we have not up to 20 airlines flying on the local route.

With their fleet size, they can afford to roll their nose and continue to traumatise Nigerians in the name of running an airline

But in the international space, it’s a different ball game entirely.

They are not only flying their brand reputation but are also carrying the reputation of the country with them.

The optics of seeing passengers mostly Nigerians stranded on a global platform is doing more damage to our reputation than can be imagined.

Now that said, do we keep railing at our sick baby until it dies?. How would its death benefit us? Are we still not the ones who will still mourn it and go around in sack clothes

Air Peace is our pride, our national carrier and one man’s vision to push Nigeria into the front seat in international aviation.

Despite all these, the airline continues to inspire other smaller airlines, with them pushing for international destinations following Air Peace’s example.

I once heard that one of the reasons why Dr Allen went into aviation was that he heard that one aircraft could employ over a thousand people and that’s why he jumped in as his own contribution. After looking very succinctly at Air Peace and after spending just one hour with its top management team at one of their retreats, I have come to a deduction.

The owners remain passionate, the vision is strong, the dedication amongst staff remains high, and the quality of human capital, especially pilots, is one of the best globally.

But all these are not enough, hence the continuous rash service and attendant public bashing

No matter my passion, my dedication, putting me in the ring with Mike Tyson is me inviting a blood bath on myself. This is what Air Peace is going through in the market – a blood bath

It is like a boxer with thin legs. The first punches and he wobbles. Airpeace has thin legs in key areas of its operations

Ownership, operations, relationships with regulators and communications

They lack empathy in their operations also; Empathy in this case, although a soft strategy, remains one of the most crucial policy weapons it can deploy. To date, I have not heard of a top Air Peace official condole with or visit stranded passengers.

Imagine if a top director of Air Peace just happened to be on ground with the passengers, providing them soothing words, explaining whatever the challenges are, and making sure they got food, drinks and medicine, or even arranging a comedian to crack jokes with them, or even taking them to the movies during the over 24-hour wait period?

Threatening a frustrated and anxious passenger with a lawsuit is hardly the best avenue to sort things out – risking a class action suit can never be a proper solution

The airline is now too big for Dr Allen. I’ve always said this: Executive powers must now be devolved.

The company must build a more expansive board, get new shareholders on board and quote it so that it becomes a public company, thereby instituting greater corporate governance

Dr Allen must look in this direction in the next 24 months; otherwise, he would be carrying the corpse of the airline in his own hands.

Secondly, it must strengthen its regulatory relationships

Many times, I have heard – ohh, some of these problems are those of others, Air Peace cannot just talk. They don’t handle baggage, it’s not their job. So Funke calling them out was wrong, I have been told.

But how do we know that? Our ticket is Airpeace, so if Lagbaja is handling our bags, that’s the business of Airpeace and that person; all we know is that Airpeace took my money, and I hold their tickets.

If the regulatory relationships were tight, some of these things would be minimised.

Airpeace should have some retired aviation regulatory champions, if not on their boards, but as consultants to smooth these relationships

Then the Communications team at Air Peace is long-suffering.

How do you spin what just happened in London or what is happening daily locally where holding an Air Peace ticket is like Kalokalo, not being sure you will get to ur destination on schedule

But again, their public engagement is poor, their understanding of the issue is poor, and their engagement is poor. They should be in crisis mode right now. There is no brand enhancement, but brand survival

The brand is being beaten black and blue, and as it is, goodwill has been totally eroded, and this would affect their bottom line and invariably hit credit lines.

Crisis Management should be their watchword now, precise engagement of all stakeholders should be on the front burner, public enlightenment and schedule management should also become imperative

Dr Allen should step back. He is clearly a visionary, and he has established a wonderful airline. He should move up the ladder as Chairman and allow the day-to-day running of the airline by experts like my brother Soname has done on Value Jet and the Ibom air people.

Air Peace as a rehasrh should  immediately look at its ownership structure, communications strategy, regulatory relations and once they get it right in these areas, everything will be ok

• Joseph Edgar is organising a Masterclass on Crisis Management and Reputational Management with Chief Emeka Anyaoku delivering the keynote

Source: Nairametrics