Reputation management
Sharing the green dream: Polishing the PR act
Business aviation needs to beware ‘the echo chamber effect’ when improving its PR profile. Here’s how it can win friends and impress (more) people. Words by Megan Kelly.
Reputation management
Sharing the green dream: Polishing the PR act
Business aviation needs to beware ‘the echo chamber effect’ when improving its PR profile. Here’s how it can win friends and impress (more) people. Words by Megan Kelly.
Steve Leigh, MD, Sensu Insight
TEENAGE STUDENT JUAN Nuñez, from Thermal, California, wants to build a career in aviation. His recent visit to Palm Springs private jet management company Desert Jet has also sparked an interest in business aviation. Nuñez, and thousands like him, are exactly the type of young person business aviation needs to build a skilled workforce and its public profile, according to industry insiders consulted by Corporate Jet Investor (CJI).
Making business aviation more sustainable has attracted growing attention in recent years. Millions have been invested in making aircraft engines more efficient, production techniques and materials more sustainable and the introduction of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and carbon offsets. Vast ingenuity (and considerable dollars) are being invested in cutting aviation’s carbon footprint ahead of the 2050 net zero deadline.
But there has been little success in persuading the public that business aviation is committed to improving its sustainability records. So, why isn’t the message getting through?
“The industry is talking to itself,” Steve Leigh, MD of public relations firm Sensu Insight tells CJI. “The industry is looking at sustainable fuel, it’s looking at onboard technology and all sorts of things, but the only people really listening to that conversation are other people in the industry.”
He says the industry is stuck in an echo chamber because its sustainability reports are often filled with technical, industry-specific terms that are not always accessible to the public. Leigh says: “The sustainability reports are not aimed at the public, they’re aimed at the stakeholders, because they’re the people who are making the decisions.”
This causes a paradox for business aviation: we need to attract the new generation of workers to help improve the industry’s sustainability and replace retirees over the coming years, but to do that, they need to be aware of its sustainable advancements. Sensu recently carried out a study of 1,000 Gen Z adults (16-25 year-olds) asking what the most important factors are that determine whether or not they want to work for a company. Nearly a third (32%) of Gen Z workers chose to apply for jobs based on the company’s sustainability record.
These are questions that have long occupied aircraft manufacturers. It’s not just about attracting a skilled young workforce. Increasingly important is answering the sustainability questions of new, younger, first-time jet buyers who genuinely want to buy (and lease) aircraft with low carbon footprints.
Bombardier’s Mark Masluch, senior director of Communication asks: “What are [sustainable] aircraft going to look like for the next generation?” He says: “That work has to be done now, because technology takes time. It takes a decade to design and deliver an aircraft.”
The younger generation’s passion for sustainability is needed to keep driving change as technology advances. As a result, it’s critical that the industry lets them know about green programmes now to attract them to aviation. “It’s not just one engineer that makes this happen,” says Masluch. “It’s not just 30 engineers that make this happen. It’s 30 different fields of engineering that are required to do this. We need people who are aerodynamics specialists, stress test specialists, metallurgical engineers, electrical engineers. Any engineering field there is, we likely need it on these sustainability programmes and we’re recruiting for it.”
Also, if you are young, very wealthy and about to buy your first private jet, the chances are you want to know if the aircraft was sustainably produced and if you can operate it sustainably. Both younger buyers and their older counterparts are probing OEMs and other business aviation players about their Environmental, Social and Governance policies. “This is one of the first questions asked of an OEM,” Stephen Friedrich, chief commercial officer, Embraer Executive Jets told our CJI London conference earlier this year. “This is happening to us now. We are asked very pointed questions about ESG.” It’s a long list of questions: where does your factories’ power come from? Are you using sustainable manufacturing methods? What is the policy on upcycling, recycling and renewable resources?
Mark Masluch, Senior director of Communication, Bombardier
Scott Neal, senior vice president Worldwide Sales at Gulfstream, also confirmed recently the escalating impact of new, younger buyers interested in sustainability topics. “I won’t share an exact percentage [of new buyers], but it is a growing component of our customer base in terms of annual sales,” Neal told Corporate Jet Investor at Farnborough international Airshow. “Quite a few of our first-time buyers’ first aircraft has been a G650, which has been strong testament to the strength of the brands [and their sustainability credentials].”
When business aviation companies do promote their sustainability work to the public, it can often fall on deaf ears, or be met with harsh criticism. Bombardier’s Mashluch says: “If you look at how the industry is viewed from a public perception perspective, it’s very much through the carbon emissions that come out the back of the plane. That is just one element of what we’re looking to tackle.” He thinks the public may not be aware of the sustainability improvements happening across the entire product lifecycle, and believes the onus is on the industry to change that through making more documents accessible to the public.
Even if companies promote their work to the public, it can get torn apart due to a lack of guidance from the government and regulators on what qualifies as acceptable marketing versus ‘greenwashing’, a misleading attempt to seem more environmentally friendly. In a first-of-its-kind claim against the aviation industry, Dutch airline KLM was recently sued by environmental groups for alleged greenwashing. The environmentalists claim KLM’s adverts and promotion of its carbon-offsetting scheme create the impression that its flights won’t make climate change worse. KLM, which also promoted the industry’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, says it believes its adverts “comply with the applicable legislation and regulations”. A KLM spokesperson told CJI: “We believe that our communications comply with the applicable legislation and regulations. Others think differently. In that respect, we hope that a court ruling in this case will clarify how best to shape our communications policy.”
The solutions to business aviation’s sustainability PR problem must be multifaceted to show customers and the public that the industry is getting greener, to head off greater regulatory control, to avoid greenwashing and to continue to attract future engineers and sustainability advocates to the industry like Nuñez. A plethora of green initiatives, such as Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), carbon emissions offsetting, and book and claim initiatives, have been launched to address this.
One such project is the National Business Aviation Association’s (NBAA’s) Sustainable Flight Department Accreditation Program, which identifies and promotes business aviation groups meeting exceptional environmental sustainability standards, encouraging industry figures and companies to implement as many sustainability strategies as possible across the life-cycle of aircraft.
“This is just as important as safety,” says Stewart D’Leon, director of Environmental and Technical Operations, National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). “There was a time when looking at a vendor where you weren’t necessarily concerned with them having a robust safety programme. That’s not the case today, it’s a key factor in who you choose to do business with, and what we’re seeing is environmental sustainability is becoming important to that same degree as a factor in decision making.”
Stewart D’Leon, Director of Environmental and Technical Operations, NBAA
But how do we ensure this doesn’t contribute to the ‘echo-chamber’ problem of the industry promoting itself to itself? Dan Hubbard, senior vice president of Communications, NBAA says the industry needs to team up to extend its reach through groups like the General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition. “The coalition undertakes initiatives designed to get the message out to the public,” Hubbard says. “We’ve also done some work on Capitol Hill here in the States, where from a policy standpoint we’re helping policymakers to understand what we’re doing and how they can help.”
To avoid greenwashing claims and attract new talent, business aviation needs to be as authentic and transparent as possible. “To really look at addressing the overall issue at a global scale, you need to properly define it,” says Bombardier’s Masluch. “You have to really quantify it credibly, and that’s why we’re encouraging our teams to look at things from a lifecycle perspective, and we’ve gone to that next step of actually publishing documents that quantify that lifecycle.” He says that the industry needs to be as clear as possible about what the problem is and what’s being done to fix it to win the public’s trust. He says: “This is not guestimates, this is not greenwashing or just rhetorical, this is a real plan, and this is how we’re measuring ourselves.”
How successfully the industry can change the public’s perception remains to be seen, but transparent efforts to promote it need to continue anyway. As Leigh says: “It is a thankless task, but it is one that the industry has to do”. At least, Juan Nuñez is impressed.
Dan Hubbard, Senior vice president of Communications, NBAA
