Trust at 30,000 Feet: What aviation can teach us about communications in an always-on world...

Trust at 30,000 Feet: What aviation can teach us about communications in an always-on world

[Register for the webinar]

For airlines, that isn't a hypothetical question. Passengers can track aircraft movements in real time. Conversations between pilots and air traffic control can be followed online. Social media can spread news of an incident around the world in minutes. And increasingly, images appearing alongside that news may not even be real.

On Wednesday 18 November at 12.30pm GMT / 1.30pm CET, epresspack, in collaboration with the European Association of Communication Directors (EACD), will be joined by Léa Wertheimer, Head of Corporate Communications at SWISS, to explore what communicators in other industries can learn from working in this environment.

When communications is always playing catch-up

Aviation provides an unusually revealing example of how the communications environment has changed.

During our initial conversation with Léa, she described how publicly available flight-tracking and air traffic control information can mean that people outside SWISS are already aware something unusual is happening to an aircraft before the communications team has received all the information internally.

It turns the traditional communications model on its head. There may be no window in which an organisation can quietly establish all the facts, agree its response and then communicate.

For Léa, that has required a change in mindset. Her team has moved towards a proactive approach where the question is no longer simply whether something should be communicated, but whether there is a good reason not to communicate it.

That applies to everyday operational issues as much as major incidents. Delays happen and passengers know they are happening. Rather than avoiding the subject, Léa's approach is to acknowledge what is happening and explain why.

Trust in an age of fake content

There is another challenge rapidly complicating this picture: misinformation and AI-generated content.

SWISS has already encountered fake imagery associated with aviation incidents, ranging from entirely invented but plausible photographs to much more dramatic images depicting events that simply never happened.

For a business where, as Léa puts it, "our currency is safety and trust", the implications are significant.

How should an organisation respond when false content can travel faster than its own communications? How can journalists establish what is genuine? And does an increasingly unreliable information environment make authoritative corporate sources and professional journalism more important rather than less?

These are questions that extend far beyond aviation.

Putting the human back into corporate communications

Speed and transparency alone aren't enough.

A recurring theme in Léa's approach is the importance of communicating in language that people actually understand. Aviation is a highly technical industry, but technical accuracy can be undermined if the audience doesn't understand what is being said.

The same applies to empathy. Standard corporate phrases such as "we apologise for the inconvenience" can feel particularly inadequate when someone's flight has been cancelled or their travel plans have fallen apart. Léa argues for acknowledging the actual experience and emotion of the people affected.

It raises a broader question for communicators: in the drive to communicate quickly and consistently, have organisations sometimes forgotten to communicate like people?

A changing role for Corporate Communications

Perhaps the most interesting lesson from SWISS is what all this means for the communications function itself.

Léa describes her team not simply as a communications department, but as a "competence centre for communication". The distinction matters.

One example she shared was of pilots approaching the communications team for advice on how best to deliver bad news to passengers over the aircraft PA system. It wasn't traditional media relations or corporate communications, but it was unquestionably a communications challenge.

It prompts another question we'll explore during the webinar: should the role of Corporate Communications be to communicate on behalf of an organisation, or to help the whole organisation become better at communicating?

Join the conversation

Trust at 30,000 Feet: What aviation can teach us about communications in an always-on world will be a practical conversation drawing on Léa's experience at SWISS to consider challenges facing communicators across every sector.

We'll explore real-time communications and preparedness, transparency and trust, misinformation and fake imagery, the importance of human communication, and the evolving role of Corporate Communications within the organisation.

Wednesday 18 November 2026
12.30pm GMT / 1.30pm CET

Hosted by epresspack in collaboration with the EACD

[Register for the webinar]