"[Working with SimpliFlying] has expanded our minds, opened our eyes and showed us what to do in concrete, practical, and tangible terms. We see the benefits not only to ourselves but to our members as well." - 
"SimpliFlying has a great balance - providing strategic insights and directions while maintaining a down-to-earth attitude in guiding LAN in strategy implementation. Justifying our investment to senior management was not difficult." - 
"The SimpliFlying MasterClass was a combination of trends and insights from the industry, as well as tailor-made topics designed to help Lufthansa progress to the next level of customer engagement. By having every management level participate, Lufthansa achieved great results in regards to 'social status' and loyalty, which was one of the key topics." - 
"At Estonian Air, we always look for partners who can bring innovation and good ideas, with the ability to execute. With Simpliflying, we get exactly that." - 
The analysis, published by our friends at Tnooz, offered several suggestions on how the airline could have improved its response. Essentially, it centered mainly on the need to be responsive on Twitter to stop the news from spreading, and replying to various stakeholders, in multiple languages.
A bird strike? The Twitter bird to the rescue.
Today, we were impressed to see that the airline has considerably improved its response on social media during a crises. To the point that we could hardly believe it was the same airline. This time the incident was a bird strike that forced one of their aircraft to land in Barcelona to perform the mandatory safety checks.
A Busy Weekend
The news broke on the 21st September but the bulk of Tweets were received on the 22nd and 23rd, a Saturday and a Sunday respectively. Despite the weekend, the airline was able to send over 330 replies to users who talked about the issue, even when the tweets were not directly addressed to the airline.
Replying to key influencers and the public
Some of the replies were sent directly to bloggers and the media who were reporting the incident. Moreover, they were sent in several languages. The positive effect of this informative action quickly became evident as several users replied to the airline thanking it for the information it was providing.
We’d like to congratulate Vueling on their effective handling of the situation – their response serves as both a testament and a case-study for airlines that wish to know how crises can (and should) be handled on social media. In short, transparency and speedy responses are of paramount importance. And Vueling kept both at the top of their agenda. Kudos to them!
To find out more about best practices and case-studies, do not forget to check out our Crisis Management MasterClass and the Crisis Management Top 10 case-pack we published a few months ago.
Featured Image: Planespotters.net
Marco Serusi
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