One Video. One Post. One PR Meltdown. What Air Canada Got Wrong.
Here’s the thing about public relations: it’s not just about what you say, it’s how, when, and to whom you say it.
This week, Michael Rousseau, CEO of Air Canada, announced he will be stepping down following a public relations fallout tied to an English-language video addressing a deadly runway collision at LaGuardia Airport.
While the airline shared that succession planning had been underway for more than two years and launched a global search in January, the timing of this announcement tells a deeper story. In a bilingual country like Canada, language is not just a communication choice; it is identity, policy, and respect. The board has now made it clear that future leadership will be evaluated in part on the ability to communicate in French.
Rousseau, who earned C$13.1 million last year, leaves behind more than a leadership transition; he leaves a case study in how quickly perception can shift when communication misses the mark.
This wasn’t just a “bad video.” This was a breakdown across multiple layers of public relations, strategy, execution, and leadership alignment, all at once. PR doesn’t start with messaging. It starts with understanding your audience.
In this case, a critical question appears to have been missed: Who needs to hear from us right now, and how? In a country where bilingual communication is expected, delivering a crisis message in English only wasn’t just an oversight. It was a stakeholder miss that quickly became the headline.
And in crisis communications, the margin for error is small.
Moments involving loss of life require more than speed; they require empathy, precision, and accessibility. That means clear, human-centered messaging delivered in a way that meets people where they are. When any of those elements are off, the message can feel distant or incomplete, regardless of intent.
And then… one post lit the match.
What’s equally important, and what many Lozafina readers should be paying attention to, is what happened after. A single LinkedIn post took this situation and turned it into a full-blown public debate.
One perspective argued the outrage was misplaced, that in a moment of tragedy, the focus should remain on safety, victims, and recovery, not language choice. Another pushed back just as strongly, saying the issue wasn’t language at all, it was about who the message was for. That failing to communicate in French, particularly given the audience and context, made the response feel performative rather than sincere.
And then it spiraled. People debated:
Whether language is tied to empathy
Whether leadership should be held accountable for cultural expectations
Whether this was a political issue, a communications issue, or overblown entirely
Whether a CEO should lose their role over something like this
The conversation moved fast and loudly.
Because that’s what happens today: PR doesn’t just live in the message. It lives in the reaction.
This is where it gets real.
A single post can reshape the narrative. What may have started as a contained communications misstep quickly became a global conversation, driven not by the company, but by the public. You don’t control the conversation anymore.
Once something is out in the world, audiences interpret it through their own lens, culture, politics, identity, and experience, and suddenly there isn’t one story. There are hundreds. People aren’t just consuming messages; they’re responding, debating, and amplifying.
And those reactions often carry more weight than the original statement.
PR lives in how organizations prepare, how leaders are guided, and how deeply teams understand the audiences they serve before anything ever goes public. Because in today’s landscape, perception isn’t just reality, it’s reputation.
And sometimes, it only takes one post to change everything.