My insights from the recent Social Media for Airlines Conference

I recently had the chance to attend some of the sessions of the Social Media for Airlines Conference that took place in London, organised by Simpliflying in association with Airline Business and Flight Global and chaired by Shashank Nigam and Mary Kirby (aka RunwayGirl). I would like to share some of the insights I got from this interesting conference (I know, it was nearly two months ago, but this site's redesign plus some other projects that came up left me little time to write a few lines about it!) where I had the chance to meet other bloggers and social media experts that focus on airlines and air travel, such as Paula Berg, Sven Solterbeck, Sergio Mello and Karlis Smiltens.

The sessions I attended were very illustrative of how social media has made a quick foray in the airline scene (and it is here to stay!) sometimes driven by external events beyond the control of airlines. A case in point was the Icelandic volcanic ash-cloud, that grounded almost all European airlines for a number of days last spring.

This event was a watershed in the social media strategy and use for many airlines and aviation related institutions. It was the dramatic disruption caused by the Icelandic volcano what forced these companies to start using social media channels to engage with their stranded clients.

At the start of the crisis some institutions did not have any proper structure to deal with social media (or to interact with their own clients in such a massive scale) and it was mainly thanks to the effort (and sleepless nights) of a bunch of dedicated professionals, such as Aurelie Valtat at Eurocontrol or Christian Kamhaug, of SAS were not only able to improvise and sustain an active presence in the main online social networks, but to set up the basis of what has become a successful long-term social media strategy...So, at least something positive came out of that episode!

I am really looking forward to the next conference where I am sure that, given the unstoppable growth of online social networks and the increasing number of ways in which airlines are tapping them to engage with their potential customers, lots of interesting new case studies will be presented!

Ryanair's cheapest fare? what about being paid to fly?

It is just coincidental, I was not intending to write again about Ryanair's website, but the Irish airline keeps giving me reasons to talk about them...

I just came across what is possible Ryanair's cheapest fare from London to Barcelona (Girona)



In this case looks like a technical issue...but will the day arrive when Ryanair is going to pay us to fly with them? the idea might not be that out of place as it seems, since it was Michael O'Leary himself that more than once has hinted that future business models for airlines might involve giving more seats for freee and destinations paying to get traffic. Although this is not that far off what some local authorities are doing, recent statements from Ryanair's chief point towards the opposite direction. But...never say never, specially when you are talking about Ryanair's pricing policy!

How to monetize an airline website: Advertise your competitors!

You need to have strong confidence in your own product to carry advertisements for the competition in key parts of your own website, but this is exactly what Ryanair is doing! After all it makes sense, if you have the cheapest air fares in the market to let the other airlines display your prices next to yours, this is what we can see in the example below, plus they can make some money when someone clicks on one of the adsense ads.

Spot the ads for competing airlines and travel sites on the right

It would be interesting to know what percentage of Ryanair's website visitors end up going to the competition (something that the Flightblogging blog already noted some time ago), but if the ads care still there, and given Ryanair's legendary ability to extract to the latest penny of value from its operations we can be certain that the overall effect has a positive effect on the Ryanair's bottom-line!

Adsense ads are actually placed automatically based on a number of criteria, but you can choose where you place them on your site, and Ryanair has gone us far a placing them in the centre of their main site. That at the time when I checked it while I was writing this post, it was carrying ads for: Eurotunnel!

Spot the Eurotunnel commercial in the central part of the site

Finnair rethinking quality

A few days ago I was checking options for my upcoming trip to Russia and I ended up at Finnair’s website. The first thing that caught my attention is the Twitterish interface that Finnair has come up with.


The central part of the screen has actually been taken over by the "Quality Hunters". This is an initiative Finnair has come up with to highlight its commitment to quality. The “quality hunters” are actually independent professionals from all over the World that have been tasked with traveling the globe during a whole month reporting on their experiences on quality wherever they go, be it the flights, airports or destinations.

The innovation is not that these "quality hunters" will be blogging and communicating their experiences along the way, engaging in open dialog with the public and making extensive use of twitter, but that Finair is giving them the main section of their corporate website. Some of the posts have little to do with the airline itself, but when they do write about Finnair I like the fact that they are sharp and straight to the point, like for example this post by "quality hunter" Christina Lund Sørensen about her less-than-satisfactory eating experience on-board several of Finnair's aircraft. It is a much welcome exercise of transparency on Finnair's side that the bloggers are allowed and even encouraged to post even when they do not have positive things to say.

The quality hunting experience has even its own site, that adds to Finnair's well designed main corporate website and where you can find all sorts of background information about the quality-hunting bloggers and their findings. I would say that overall it is a very good idea, with an even better execution!

The new Allplane Blog is here!

Those of you that were already regular visitors of the Allplane Blog must have noticed the scope of the change. Yes, after some months in the net, operating with a very basic template and configuration that delivered less than optimal upload speeds, the time has come to unveil the new design of the Allplane Blog!

But the change is not merely aesthetic, besides the new functionalities that have also been added and the enhanced connectivity with other blogs and social media platforms, this is just the first step in the project to make of Allplane a much more rounded and comprehensive platform for all those in love with the world of commercial aviation and air travel.

Watch this space!

Manchester United players in the latest Turkish Airlines commercial

At this blog we follow very closely all news about Turkish Airlines, an airline in the middle of an expansion cycle that is likely to consolidate Istanbul as one of Europe's major hubs.

We reported some time ago on the marketing initiative that led the Turkish airline to sponsor two of Europe's major football clubs: F.C. Barcelona and Manchester United. We spoke about the FC Barcelona deal last time, but it is Man United's players that are now the main characters of Turkish Airlines latest commercial. Watch out if you happen to be on the same flight!

How this Alrosa TU-154 made it to the news

When last August I was at Domoededovo airport, in Moscow, this Alrosa TU-154 caught my attention, Soviet-made aircraft are becoming more and more difficult to spot. What I could not imagine that this same plane (registration number RA-85684) would make it to the news a few weeks later, when it made an emergency landing in a remote Russian airfield and overrun the runway. Fortunately everyone on-board survived!