Plane Conversations

Social Flights will soon release Part 2 of the Operators Whitepaper.  Part 1 identified the intrinsic value of private aviation to a travel market.  Part 2 will identify some of the technology challenges of integrating with the mainstream travel community.

In short, the next step for private aviation is to integrate with the mainstream market while offering seamless transition with other technologies and transportation modes. The following is a summary of Part 2.

The Technology Challenge

Technology is encroaching on every aspect of the travel industry from on-line travel agencies to Next Generation Air Traffic Management.  It is no longer sufficient to have a great looking website, the data that private operators collects and distributes must be compatible with all other services that support the customer long before and long after they cross your threshold.

Compatibility of Pricing

One example is in compatibility of pricing; private airplanes are priced by the flight-hours imposed on a private aircraft. However,  commercial airplanes are priced by the market availability of seats.  There is no way for the customer to compare these two travel options; as such, these markets are segmented by price incompatibility.  The trend is increasing through the unbundling of services like baggage fees and check in fees and convenience fees, hotel, and car rentals contracts, discount coupons, etc.

True Value / Time Value

A vastly neglected aspect of travel is called True Value. For example; the cost of traveling to a hub airport often exceeds the cost of the airline ticket.  The time waiting for TSA screening and connecting flights often exceeds the in-route flight time.  The total transit time often exceeds the time that the traveler needs to be at the location.  Weekend travel is impossible without extra hotel stays and missing one or two days of work.  Time is money.  Lost opportunity is money. Life is short.

Alternate Technologies

Alternate technologies such as mobile connectivity and social media drive different migration patters of people, business and entertainment. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google offer alternate ways for people to communicate in lieu of travel, but they also expose more people to more places that are less accessible by commercial aviation.

The Integration

Today, the travel market is segmented in information silos where companies hoard information in the name of competitive advantage.  However, when prices are comparable, the market can apply a time/value formula where alternate technologies enhance the value of travel.  Then, and only then can the entire door-to-door travel experience can be fully integrated in an efficient market where everyone playing the travel game shares information, combines services, and collaborate in the best interest of the customer.

It’s a game, let’s have fun

illustration by Sean Driscoll

The Premise of Social Flights is to combine social media (the way that people communicate) with air travel (the places that people go).  It turns out that the relationship between the two are correlated – they impact on each other.

Steve Inskeep with National Public Radio (NPR) recently hosted a program featuring new research that suggests that twitter connections follow airline connections.

Or, could it be the other way around – or both?

From NPR: The premise of Twitter, one of the premises, is that geography no longer matters, that we are bound together by common interests and not by where we live. And the second premise is that Twitter is a truly democratic medium, that you could be living in a small town in a country no one’s heard of but you could have a megaphone now that is heard all over the world.

According to research conducted by sociologist Barry Wellman at the University of Toronto, who analyzed half a million tweets to learn where people are tweeting from and who is following them, twitter traffic in many ways follows airline routes.

From NPR: [Looking at]  airline connections, looking at all the hubs that are connected to one another. And what Wellman has found in Toronto is that the airline connections between your city and the rest of the world predict where your Twitter followers are going to be. So if your Twitter followers are an airline flight away, they’re much more likely to have Twitter connections to you than if they’re not accessible by a plane.

While such result makes for an popular general interest story, the implications for economic development of smaller cities may be profound.  Small cities that do not have airline connections may actually be shut off from the amplification of social media.  Furthermore, as airlines continue to retract service to small communities and concentrate around hubs, the fewer social connections will form between groups of people.

This research is deeply important for economic development professionals who are trying to keep corporations in town, who are trying to build new industries, and who are trying to attract talent and create jobs. The failure of airlines to serve their community may be amplified across the globe.

Connect with Social Flights and reconnect with the world 

We would like to think that Social Media makes the world more flat, but instead, the world is somewhat lumpy.  Those communities not perched on a lump are still at a disadvantage to having their voices heard.

Almost 13 years ago, Doc Searls coined that most infamous mantra of the Social Media revolution among the 95 theses in the  Cluetrain Manifesto “Markets are Conversation”.  The corollary should be; “kill the conversation and you kill the market”. The more factors that disconnect smaller cities, the less likely that air service could ever return.

Social Flights puts the power of the social media revolution back into the hands of small communities by deploying a fleet of private aircraft to amplify the collective voice of smaller communities, not the boardrooms of the commercial airlines.

Steven Frischling, aka: Fish, is a globe hopping airline emerging media consultant, one of our favorite bloggers, and a trusted advisor.  He has an uncanny ability to identify relevant trends with equal ability for compiling supporting data into useful forms.  In his recent post, Steve compiled a list for the percentage of twitter communications from airlines that contained the word “sorry” (or the equivalent in the language of the airline).

See the original post for details on how he compiled the following list:

So who is the most apologetic airline?  Its not about how many times they say they are sorry, it is the percent of times they say they are sorry.

@British_Airways - 3,766 in 20,757 tweets, 18.14%

@QantasAirways - 2,185 in 14,595 tweets, 14.97%

@AmericanAir - 2,232 in 15,432 tweets, 14.46%

@SingaporeAir - 43 in 385 tweets, 11.16%

@SAS – 238 (in Norwegian 88) in 3,457 tweets, 9.43%

@SouthwestAir – 711 in 8,092 tweets, 8.78%

@Delta – 299 in 4,211 tweets, 7.10%

@AirCanada - 167 in 3,356 tweets, 4.97%

@USAirways – 80 in 2,149 tweets, 3.72%

@United - 66 in 1,897 tweets, 3.47%

@KLM – 826 in 30,563 tweets, 2.7%

@MAS – 69 in 3,740 tweets, 1.84%

@GulfAir – 32 in 1,918 tweets, 1.66%

@AirBaltic - 52 in 3,172 tweets, 1.63%

@RoyalBruneiAir – 17 in 1,348 tweets, 1.26%

Sorry by Surprise

In a recent conversation with Steve, he mentioned that airlines called him up to find out HOW he was able to compile this information.  More important in our minds is, how can the airlines not know how to compile this information?

Apologies are very important because people do respond to a personal touch, so kudos to the airlines that have strong satisfaction outreach programs.  On the other hand, apologies are an opportunity for a company to improve and management should take an opportunity to review “sorry” data.

The “insurance” approach.

Insurance is something that pays out after the failure occured.  For example, AirBnB (a home sharing service) offers an insurance payout if your home is trashed by a renter from their network. Insurance utterly fails to compensate the victim for personal, physical, and emotional losses.  Airlines most often compensate a traveler with a free ticket and nothing else – they should be looking for route cause or they may find their selves on one of Steve’s lists.

Social Flights responds with a very simple solution; our ride sharing service and community air service program.

By eliminating many of the breakdown points of the complex and overloaded hub and spoke system, Social flights can reduce the number of situations where an apology may be required. When a community can literally operate their own airline to their own schedule from their own airport, they eliminate delays due to traffic, parking, long lines, delays, connections, service fees, congestion, overnights, and a host of traveller harassment.

Go ahead and forgive, but don’t forget that there are options…