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Daniel Stecher

Lufthansa Systems

Social Media & Airlines –

Mehr als nur ein Spiel mit Passagieren?

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1 Why are Airline Crews disconnected from Passengers Social Media?

Airlines in the airline industry use social media channels like Twitter, Tum-

blr, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn just to name a few, in

order to promote their travel services. Airlines post pictures from destina-

tions and aircraft. Airlines play games via social media with their passen-

gers. Airlines respond to requests and complains received via Twitter,

Facebook, Google+ and so on. Airlines use social media channels to stim-

ulate passengers to go on the airline website to get the latest flight updates.

Airlines treat their VIP - very important passengers - very special. Fre-

quent travellers, business class and first class passenger have lounge access,

get priority boarding and a special treatment.

2 What about the SMAP - Social Media Active PAX?

Airlines don't care whether you have 654,054 followers on twitter and fly

from A to B in economy class. The important status sign is the booking

class, business or first class, not the social media reach and influence one

can have due to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Flipboard.

Imagine the following situation: a social media active passenger waits for

boarding of his flight which is delayed by 40 minutes. He checks-in via

swarm and tweets "flight YX123 of airline blabla is delayed..." and his

125,678 followers read this, maybe retweet or comment it. Poor and neg-

ative marketing for the airline. The social media active passengers board

the plane and the airline on the ground knows about his bad feeling and

tweet.

Today, the airline will probably tweet back and apologize. The problem is:

the social media active passenger will not read it until he's connected again.

The airline has maybe an internet enable fancy Inflight Entertainment Sys-

tem (IFE). But the crew members on board do not have the information

from the airline operations or social media department that one or more

passengers shared their produced negative feelings about the airline.

This is for me the Disconnected Passenger! Disconnected from the crew

who is serving him maybe the next 8-12 hours on a long-haul flight. Why

is the operations control center not passing on to the crew the passenger

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information received via social media channels? The crew would be ena-

bled to turn a negative experience and emotions and surprise the passenger

with a special treatment knowing that the social media active passen-

ger will again speak and tweet about it. There's no better way to produce

positive marketing if airlines respond during the flight. This is the tightest

moment and feeling with the airline.

Since 2002, I have been travelling world-wide and I use different social

media apps, channels and platforms during my journeys. I tweet with my

three Twitter accounts, I check-in on airports and flights via swarm, my

Jetlovers.com is counting flown flight miles and creates a fancy world

travel map, I blogg and post photos of my OCC (Operations Control Cen-

ter), meetings, visits and travel experiences. I was watching my Klout and

influencer score for a while, but realized that it doesn't pay off. I have sev-

eral Flipboard magazines and especially the airline & aviation related "Up

in the Air" has more than 81,000 readers.

Since today, I have never experienced that any crew member1 knew about

me, what I have tweeted just moments before boarding. Once I tweeted

very positive about the crew of a flight and two days later I travelled back

with the same crew. My positive feedback didn't reach the crew.

3 Disconnected passengers and disconnected crews from social media!

Why airlines are not making use of social media active passengers? Why

social media is mainly used for answering social media inbound complains

of passengers affected from a lost baggage, missed flight and so on?

Recently, Virgin Australia2 has announced that the social media division

is put in the OCC, in order to ease the communication with passengers af-

fected from a disruption. That's a first step in the right direction! Airlines

1H. Baskas, „Tech-Enabled Flight Attendants Upgrade Customer Service,“ fortune.com, 15

Dezemeber 2015. [Online]. Available: http://fortune.com/2015/12/21/flight-attendants-

tech-devices/. [Zugriff am 25 August 2016]. 2„virgin australia puts social media crew at centre of airline operations,“ TheAustralien.com,

[Online]. [Zugriff am 25 August 2016]

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need to be connected with passengers during the flight. Not before and

after the most important moment of the journey.

Southwest Airlines3 “social business” department is at the center of the

entire company’s operations and puts social business as the “hub,” with

spokes extending into every other department.

4 Inflight Entertainment Systems and Social Media Integration

Social seating is available with some airlines that allow their passengers

to connect their Facebook or LinkedIn profile during the booking and

check-in process. Passengers can then select their seat next to another Fa-

cebook profile owner. Not too bad. But that's not all.

I'd rather expect that airlines don't ask me again and again during service

which wine I want to drink, because they can see it from my Facebook

profile. The seating could be done by interest, business field or leisure. Im-

age two golf payers sit next to each other discussing who made more hole-

in-one. Two business men flying in the same direction start to build their

business relation during the flight, because the airline seated side by side.

Imagine the airline communicates with you as a passenger via the IFE. The

airline knows where you're seated. The airline knows your connecting flight

which could be delayed and sends you the details on your IFE screen or

provides you with a special voucher for a free drink, even if you are an

economy passenger, but you're influential via social media.

5 The new airline status will be Social Media Active PAX.

This week I flew to Moscow and the flight attended gave me a bunch of red

chocolate hearts the airline is famous for. I just gave her an item and men-

tioned to her that the MEL (Minimum Equipment List) has to be updated.

I tweeted about it, because I love chocolate, especially from that airline

3S. Pathak, „How Southwest Airlines turned social media into social business,“ digiday.com, 17

Dezember 2015. [Online]. [Zugriff am 25 August 2016].

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from Berlin! I postet it on my "Up in the Air" Flipboard magazine and

81,000 readers could read it!

I’m waiting for the moment this airline in my industry hands me over my

special chocolate heart when I board the aircraft.

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