Vote for the SimpliFlying Hero of April 2012: bmibaby vs JetBlue vs Virgin Atlantic

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We’re back with the nominations for April’s round of SimpliFlying Heroes. Over a keenly contested set of three rounds, we’ve had three excellent winners for January, February and March. We’re sure this month’s nominations will be keenly contested as well! Here they are:

Julian Carr, Bmibaby

The British Airline Bmibaby’s recent initiatives, led by its MD Julian and The Rabbit Agency, hit Simpliflying’s headlines recently with an excellent visual initiative where it engaged Instagram communities by allowing some of their members to meet in person and take part in “photo walks” at various Bmibaby destinations. The campaign appears to be part of a larger off-airport engagement strategy that focuses on destination and location specific initiatives. Previously the airline organized city tours based on Gowalla check-ins and routes, as well as a Grand Tour of Europe initiative where participants were invited to check in trough gowalla at various of Bmibaby destinations.

Morgan Johnston, JetBlue

Not long after we released our Crisis Management Top 10, the social media team at JetBlue gave a great demonstration of just how important social media can be in a crisis.  When the pilot of a JetBlue flight had to be restrained in mid air by flight crews and passengers following a mental-breakdown, the airline immediately started replying to all incoming tweets, provided information and even set up a live-blogged it on the JetBlue Tales blog.  Furthermore, to avoid the spread of rumors the airline shared clear information from its blog, and on both Facebook and Twitter where it also purchased a sponsored tweet to keep the statement in a prominent position.

Kyle Thorne, Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic is one of those airlines that keeps surprising us with their social media initiatives and often gets featured on our SimpliFlying Top 10s. Today we have decided to nominate them for the airline’s continued efforts in creating environments where travelers can share experiences, and in particular for its latest effort: Travelreads. For this initiative the airline partnered with Longreads to create a curated library of travel-related reads that can be shared with users through a dedicated twitter channel and the #longreads tag. Furthermore this initiative fits nicely with the company’s vtravelled blog and the community of travelers that it has created.

May the best Hero win! As always, voting will close in 7 days from today (ie, 17 April 12 pm ET).