‘Our major communication is removing misinformation and misunderstanding about Air Travel’

As we prepare and re-open skies; RwandAir has been engaging our customers on our various platforms including digital about our intentions to return to the skies, subject to the lifting of travel restrictions. The feedback has been very much mixed with a level of high uncertainty in regards to the future in general, either be it economic uncertainty or just overall concerns caused by this ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. What are consistently coming up in discussion are the health and safety concerns in particular with air travel.

It appears that there has been a lot of negative public sentiment towards health and safety issues regarding air travel in particular, as the enablers or propagators of the Covid-19 virus. This has been driven partly by misinformation and misunderstanding. This has been very damaging to consumer confidence in passenger air transport and it will have long-lasting effect in air travel recovery if not addressed soon.

That said, it is not all lost as it gives us the opportunity to correct the narrative by communicating to the public real facts on how relatively safe passenger air travel is. For example, aircrafts are installed with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters that supply clean air into the cabin and the filters trap 99.9+ of particulates such as microscopic viruses and bacteria spreading through the cabin. For this, we circulate videos from Boeing and Airbus aircraft manufacturers demonstrating the supply of clean cabin air through the action of HEPA filters where one can notice the cabin air flow safety and other enhancements.

Thus, we are jointly working together with our travel partners and counterparts, on improving consumer confidence through a strategic approach that allows us to share full details on the safety measures we have put in place as an airline. This will give us a better chance of stimulating demand sooner and resulting in a quicker recovery.

We also share guidelines by IATA and ICAO to help us educate our markets on the measures put in place by the industry and which RwandAir has enhanced it further with our very own plans in place as shared in the updated RwandAir Health and Safety Manual. We believe it will be beneficial for us to keep engaging each of our markets with such valuable information as we prepare to re-open. It is also very encouraging to hear that the willingness to fly again, either for business or reconnecting with family is still there and ready.