Plane Conversations

Debbie Miller is a social media and hospitality blogger who recently outlined some social media efforts of airlines.  Her analysis is important for two reasons;  first, it demonstrates how the industry can use social media to communicate with travelers and their network of friends and family.

Second, it demonstrates how communities respond to social media inputs; what works and what does not.

Luggage Tracking

Delta Airlines implemented a system for travelers to track their checked baggage. Via the airline carrier’s iPhone app, guests are able to monitor the whereabouts of their luggage at all times. [response unknown]

Influencer Events

In the fall, All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan’s leading airline carrier, announced that its “Inspiration of Japan” service brand would be introduced to the Los Angeles-Narita (Tokyo) route beginning in January.  [ANA is threw a big party through social media resulting in 5.4 Million brand impressions]

Choose Your Seat Mate

Recently, Royal Dutch airline KLM announced a new program called “Meat and Seat,” allowing people to choose who they might sit next to on a flight by viewing other travelers’ social media profiles. [Reaction remains mixed]

15 Minute Flights

Last summer, a bridge over LA’s popular 405 Freeway was set to be demolished, leaving a significant portion of highly-trafficked highway to be closed for a weekend in July.  As a result, JetBlue Airlines decided to offer $4 flights from Long Beach to Burbank and vice versa on Saturday.  [surpassed all expectations and all flights sold out in 3 hours.]

Building a company on Social Media:

Meanwhile, Social Flights is building the company on Social Media – and we are learning many new things.  Today we have over 14,000 registered users, over 90 private operators representing 500 aircraft.  We have dozens of partners who want to service our travelers.

Social Flights has opened flights between Branson, Milwaukee, Austin, and Nashville.  We have flown Football, NASCAR, and Corporate passengers as well as VIPs, Celebrities, and politicians.  Apparently, our  social media design is working well.

Lessons learned

Ideally, we would like to have a person on the ground in each location to interpret data related to that location to proactively match supply and demand.   This person would be able to nudge a community toward the private air service option and educate them to the value proposition.

Now comparing our experience with the airline experience cited above, there are several similarities;

• Each seeks to distinguish themselves by introducing a scalable service
• They operate in a hyper-local domain.

In other words, they seek to improve the travel experience and they have someone on the ground meeting a local need.  Those are the activities that work best.

The use of social media in air service industry is still very new, but already we can see important trends for social media usage in air service industries

Few people get on a commercial airplane to enjoy the fine food, friendly conversation and sensational view – but that may change as KLM continues to innovate in social media.  Some may remember that KLM was the first to provide on-demand service from Europe to Miami booked entirely through social media.

This time, KLM is banking on the fact that people who have both an origin city and a destination city in common, would have other things in common as well. KLM observes that people share information with each other so freely on social media- so maybe they’ll share information with each other on “Social Airlines”.

Will something get lost in the translation between the virtual and the reality? Fortunately, Anne van den Berg was kind enough to provide Social Flights with a translation of her Dutch language blog,  Editor Anne Daily:

You always have to wait and see who will sit next to you on an airplane. A crying kid or a smelly man, it is not always fun. Soon, this can be in the past. The Dutch airline company KLM will be offering seating suggestions based on someone’s Twitter or Facebook account. The goal, says an executive from KLM, is letting, mainly business, passengers network. I am very curious how this will work. 

Well, we are asking the same questions at Social Flights.  In fact we are attempting to fill small aircraft on direct flights based on a similar assumption that people of like interests would choose to share an airplane together.  While the KLM starts with a full plane and sorts people by interests, Social Flights hopes to go one step further and use such data to “kickstart” scheduled “flash Charter Jet” service.  So while KLM sees an important branding advantage, Social Flights sees and entirely new paradigm for air transportation – public Charter Jets.

Anne van den Berg continues with the following analysis:

- What kind of customers are you serving? I wonder, what customer are waiting for this service? Personally, I like having some conversations with my neighbour in an airplane, but, mainly when I return from a trip, I want to sleep. Nó contact. If someone will come and sit next to me with the expectation of discussing the state of the world in a highly intellectual manner, it is very probable he will be deceived. 

- And what about privacy? I expect that customers will have to do an opt-in, but do you want to give everybody insight in who you are? If you put your Twitter information out there, sure that is public already, but Facebook? That is mainly meant for family and friends (although some people will stretch that definition). 

KLM has since disclosed in this CNN article that mutual acceptance to use the social seating tool will be required. KLM was quick to note that the intention is not to create a dating game and they did not disclose if they would charge an extra fee for the service. Further, they they did mention adding any amenities in support of the friendship event.

This leaves me wondering what the implications of being “unfriended” in virtual space and reality space at the edge of physical space.  In any case, Social Flights will be watching KLM developments actively. Thanks Anne for the tip and translation on this story – let’s share a flight sometime.