Why we are not looking at re-branding —Dana Airline

Head, Corporate Communications, Dana Airline, Mr Tony Usidamen, in an interview with Shola Adekola of the Tribune newspaper reviews the activities of the airline since the unfortunate incident of June 3, 2012, while giving reasons the airline is not thinking of a name-change for now. Excerpts:
Need for re-branding?
It’s a very unfortunate incident that affected lots of people.  But as safe as aviation is, as per global statistics, it is still not 100 per cent accident free. As a result, accidents have been recorded in different parts of the world, including Nigeria.
In Europe, in the recent history of aviation, between 2008 and 2009, Air France and BA that suffered similar incident too did not have to change the names of their airlines.  If we come locally as well, there was an airline that suffered a crash and continued with its operations with the same name and months after, for commercial reason, the management decided to rest the operations of the airline. So, management can decide for different reasons to either retain the name of an airline or change the name or re-brand as it were. The only airline that we know that has changed name, did that because that airline was indicted because its processes and systems were grossly inadequate.  So, the airline wanted to get away from the link with that name.
Most of these incidents, sometimes, are not due to the fact that the airline was not doing something right. When you change a name, sometimes there might be a bad connotation, people might think well maybe they are doing something wrong. Before the incident, Dana Airline had a good reputation and the preliminary report released by the only official body that can produce a report, the AIB, has never said anything to the contrary. So, at the moment one can still rest on that reputation that we had, since no report has shown any deficiency on the airline. We believe that we have nothing to hide, even though re-branding can’t be a good strategy.
In the case of Dana, we’ve decided to continue our operations with the same name, and the onus is on us to prove to the travelling public and allay the fears they have, regarding the unfortunate incident.  From the management perspective, we are not looking at re-branding,  based on the reputation we have  built over the years and base on the fact  that the preliminary investigation report released so far has not indicted the airline, in any way in its processes. This is why we are continuing operations with our name for now.

Allegations about the brand not demonstrating enough sympathy
After the incident, we tried to visit every family. Everybody was part of the visit. Some were not prepared to see us, while some said: “I don’t want your money,” even though we still went to the funerals.  While I agree that a lot of things could have been done better, in terms of funeral, there were certain things we couldn’t do, even though we wanted to.
There were two things at the back of our minds in the communication we have been rolling out since the accident. First, assist the families of the victims as much as possible. This we communicated and tried to demonstrate in all the things that we did in the aftermath of the accident. Besides the visits made by everybody, including directors of the company, to the families, we also put in place processes to ensure that, even though money cannot bring back the dead, what was due to them, they got.
Nothing that we could have done that would have brought back their loved ones, but we wanted to be there for them as much as we could. So, besides the visits, we opened  channels of communication for them. We had toll-free numbers that they could call. Even before a lot of people started talking about compensation, we had started calling on the victims’ next of kins to please come forward because we understood our duties to them and we were willing to fulfil them. And this was why immediately after the incident, we took the decision to suspend our operations, even before the directive from the Federal Government came.

Why it took the airline six months to regain its operational licence and the magnitude of the loss suffered during the period
This is one question we ourselves seem to be asking. What happened to us is an aberration of the norm.  In strict aviation guidelines and rules, you do not ground an airline after the incident.  Interestingly to the question of cost, this is not a subject we can talk about now because it’s an insult to the memories of people who lost their lives. For us, we are not concerned really with how much money we have lost so far. The greatest loss to us is not money but families that we lost because at Dana Air, we consider all our guests as part of the  Dana family. So, losing part of our family and our colleagues is our greatest loss. The greatest loss to us is not money.

Strategies that would re-ignite customers’ passion in the brand
There is no extra-ordinary strategy that we adopted, but we hope to keep the information flow as much as possible. Maybe we have not done enough in that regard, but we need to do a lot in pushing information on everything that we are doing out there.  A lot of perception right now is based on inadequate understanding of how the aviation industry works, and secondly, sundry issues like accident investigations, people don’t understand.