Airlines Cautious in Return to Ads

Commercial airlines that have watched passenger traffic tumble in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks now are grappling with the thorny issue of talking to consumers who are afraid to travel.

Airlines have stuck with their traditional post-disaster routine of pulling advertisements, hunkering down and waiting for the headlines to change. But this time, the advertising blackout won’t simply give way to campaigns emphasizing cheap fares, comfortable seats or frequent-flier mileage.

“Safety is now an extraordinarily tricky topic for the airlines,” said Michael Taylor, director of travel services for JD Power & Associates, an Agoura Hills-based market research firm. “Arguably, commercial airlines are still the safest form of transportation.

“But airlines are now in a fight for survival; if they don’t get the confidence of the flying public back, they won’t survive in the long run.”

There is no manual for airlines trying to craft appropriate messages to reassure consumers after a disaster of such immensity. Pan Am Flight 103, brought down by a terrorist bomb in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, “is probably as close as you can get,” said Barbara Beyer, president of Avmark, an Arlington, Va.-based aviation consulting firm.

“How well Pan Am did after that is open to question,” Beyer said. “Pan Am didn’t communicate all that well. They were very hostile to any sort of hint that it was a failure of security on their part . . . even though the papers were just plastered with accusations of lax security.”

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks came as the airline industry already was reeling from a downturn in business and personal travel. Since then, thousands of airline workers have been laid off and flight schedules have been trimmed.

Congress on Friday passed a $15-billion bailout for the cash-hungry industry.

Airline executives also are pressing lawmakers to turn airport security over to a federal agency. Some observers expect the airline industry to incorporate that government involvement into upcoming advertisements designed to calm consumers.

But Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Radnor, Pa.-based Business Travel Coalition, maintains that consumer confidence won’t rise simply because federal officers are staffing security stations. Passengers want evidence that government and airline security forces can show “they’ve closed the intelligence gap on international terrorism.”

“On one television channel, you get [Department of Transportation Secretary] Norm Mineta telling you that the system is safe. But flip the channel and you see Air Force One with F-16s on its wings,” Mitchell said.

How would Mitchell send the message that the skies are safe? Have President Bush, “with little public notice and plenty of Secret Service protection, drive out to Dulles with news cameras in tow, pick a commercial flight and fly it.”

When Air Transport Assn. President Carol B. Hallett spoke to airline pilots on Aug. 16 about high-tech advances in the industry, she underscored the reason airline travel is the safest mode of travel. “It is difficult today, when airlines carry millions of passengers safely every day, to recall a time when flying was a gamble,” the trade group executive said.

But airline advertising has focused on anything but safety in recent decades. “Safety has become a kind of black-cat jinx,” Avmark’s Beyer said. “As soon as you announce you’ve had 40 years without a fatal accident, you get one.”

The industry spent $500 million on advertising last year, but its biggest public relations challenge was fending off the growing army of fed-up consumers demanding to know why airlines couldn’t stick to published flight schedules. UAL Corp.’s United Airlines eventually hustled Chairman James Goodwin into an airplane to tape an apologetic commercial.

Early this month, AMR Corp.’s American Airlines’ commercials showed flight attendants removing seats to make the coach section more comfortable. United was scrambling to install easy-check-in kiosks at airports. And Southwest Airlines had just introduced a humorous spot for upcoming NFL broadcasts.

After a tragedy, airline advertising “slowly starts coming out again over time,” said Tracy Wong, chairman of Seattle-based WongDoody, which produces ads for Alaska Airlines. “It’s usually very bland to start, . . . but this time, that [humorous] tone will be gone for a long time.”

The only domestic airline advertising evident immediately after the attacks came from the Air Transport Assn., which ran full-page ads decrying the “senseless acts of terrorism against our nation.”

Southwest made a careful return to television advertising Tuesday with two somber spots that outlined the Dallas-based carrier’s efforts to restore normal service. United ran a full-page newspaper advertisement Friday in major markets that contrasted the normal concerns of daily living with life “in the wake of last week’s horrible tragedy.”

The new ads reflect the raw emotions evident around the country. “You could put your thumb over [United’s] logo and it’s an ad from corporate America,” Wong said. “Airlines are not addressing airline issues with these ads right now, they’re addressing American issues.”

Advertising agency executives say they are trying to find the right words and tone to reach consumers. David Lubars, president and executive creative director of Fallon, United’s Minneapolis-based advertising agency, has canvassed World War II advertising to get a better understanding of what might reach stunned Americans.

“You see effective campaigns that were good for the brands, but that also put people--the greater good--above everything else,” Lubars said. “It’s not just ‘buy our product.’ It’s talking about a greater good.”

Alaska Airlines will return to advertising during the next week with spots running during major league baseball games and, a bit later, with print advertisements for new, lower fares. “It’s going to be very generic-type stuff,” Alaska spokesman Jack Walsh said. “There won’t be much flash to it.”

Despite the cash shortfall, airlines already are dangling cheap fares in front of consumers to try to rebuild business. National Airlines last week introduced a “Get America Flying” program that offered $25 round-trip tickets for select flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and $99 round trips on certain flights between Los Angeles and Miami.

“We’re an airline, we fly people around, and we’re trying to give consumers another reason to fly,” National spokesman Dik Shimizu said. “The reality is that airlines and other parts of the economy have got to get people back into their normal routines as quickly as possible.”

Industry observers say consumers will determine when they’re ready to return to the skies. “Some people just are not going to fly,” Beyer said. “You could pay them and they still would not fly.”