At AirGate Solutions, we’ve just completed our July-August update of Airports Using Facebook.  We now are tracking over 160 airports, including the Top 30 International Airports, as defined by Airports Council International (ACI). In this post, we focused only on airports that use Facebook as a social media platform, as defined by an active Facebook page.

What is truly surprising is that is less than 50% of the 160+ airports, many of them top international airports, either do not use Facebook as a social media platform or we were unable to locate their site. More surprising, is the fact that we also found most airport websites do not provide a link to their social media pages (Facebook or Twitter).

Measured by an airport’s total number of Facebook Fans, we see that only 40% of the airports in our Top 10 categories are large international airports (in CAPS), as categorized ACI, ranked by total numbers of passengers.

The Top 10 Airports Using Facebook (total Fans) – U.S. Airports Only
Cleveland
Akron-Canton
Oakland
Yeager
ATLANTA
BOSTON
DENVER
South Bend
McAllen-Miller
LOS ANGELES

The Top 10 Airports Using Facebook (total Fans) – All Airports
Cleveland
Akron-Canton
SINGAPORE
Oakland
Yeager
ATLANTA
BOSTON
Budapest
DENVER
South Bend

Thanks for your many comments regarding our Social Media Index tool for airports. It was designed more as a “census” of how many …

IATA has suggested air traffic growth seems to be resuming after the economic decline of 2008-9. Future growth trends will be driven by the low-cost airlines (LCC), as they continue to increase their passenger loads. LCC’s have revitalized many regional airports, leading to competition between airports and the need for airports to be competitive in their fees.

This presents a challenge to airports to find new sources of revenue, with the clear understanding that they cannot continue to operate with a “more of the same” attitude.

Airports recognize that they must adopt new approaches in order to actively support this growth of air travel and be competitive. Those airports that successfully rise to the challenge will become “Airports of the Future” and will exhibit three key characteristics that distinguish the successful from all others:

Lower-cost operating costs
Faster and more efficient passenger flows
New revenue streams, driven by increased retail and services opportunities

Compounding the airport’s struggle to compete in today’s global markets are several conflicting resource demands. The airports’ global association, the Airports Council International, highlights some of their members’ priorities:

“Sweat the Assets”: the effective and efficient use of facilities
Growth …

In March, when the first list of “Airports Using Twitter” was posted, we certainly generated a lot of interest in the topic by airports and others in our industry. The current list of airports using social has now grown to 143, which represents a 26% increase from the previous post of the list. The list includes many of the Top 30 International airports by size, as listed by ACI (shown below in capitals).

The rankings are straight-forward: the ratio of the number of Twitter followers to total passengers using the airport. But we  recognized that it may be more relevant to categorize airports by their relative size, i.e. by total passenger count. By ranking airports within their own category, we feel that this may better represent the airport’s effort to engage with customers through Twitter social media programs. It is felt that if airports have a higher ratio (followers to total passengers (PAX), it suggests that those airports may be more engaged with their traveling customers. More on this topic to be discussed in another post.

The Top 10 Airports Using Twitter by Category

Top 10 Twitter Airports:  …