@Rob: The presentation was indeed very well received Rob. And I had intriguing questions as well, both on the stage and off. Here’re a couple.
1) How can airlines use social media as a sales channel? Eg selling tickets on Facebook.
2) How do you know what to “control” and what not to?
3) What about implementation of social media strategies? Which dept should lead it? Marketing? IT? or someone else?

And here were my answers:

1) Airlines like Mango in South Africa have used Facebook as a sales channel in the past. JetBlue and Southwest regularly use Twitter for this purpose too. It works similar to another medium – have an exclusive offer, for a certain time period and track results for that. But the key difference becomes the ability to make that viral – since it’s social media. Have you ever thought what’s more effective – announcing a fare deal, or asking a person who’s bought that fare deal to share it with his friends online? Zappos.com did just that, where is Ashley buys a pair of boots, her Facebook friends get notified along with a photo of the boots! And this can be forwarded on to other friends too. That’s viral now.

In sum, it can certainly be used as a distribution channel, but works very well if the viral nature is tapped on.

2) Airlines should come out of the mold where they’re trying to control the messaging. In social media, the brand is not what you say it is, but what THEY say it is. They can try to control the direction of the discussion, but not the discussion itself.

3) The implementation has to be led by one person or team. And this team works better if its cross-functional and has the authority to make things work across depts. too, when it comes to siloed airlines.