JetBlue has established itself so firmly as a star in social media that it needs no introduction. Unsurprisingly, they were voted to the first position in the April round of SimpliFlying Heroes, receiving an overwhelming 82% of the votes. We reached out to Morgan Johnston, who heads JetBlue’s social efforts, and he most kindly obliged us with some tidbits about JetBlue’s social media efforts.

JetBlue’s first jump into social media was after the ice-storm of February 2007 when they needed to address their customers to talk to them about lessons learned from an operational failure. They made the decision to address customers directly through YouTube and learned very quickly that establishing a direct relationship with customers through these channels was appreciated – and also provided an invaluable resource to learn more.

 
On the road to greatness
When Twitter began to gain additional prominence in March, JetBlue recognised the opportunity of the real-time nature of the medium. Because users were posting their experiences as they happened, the airline could talk with them as they were travelling. This offered amazing customer …

“We live in an extremely dynamic environment… None of us on this [podcast] and potentially anyone listening knew what the hell Pinterest was a year ago”

With these words Vueling’s CEO, Alex Cruz, responded to a question on the Spanish airline’s future social marketing strategy during this month’s Simplifying Podcast that featured him as a guest.

 

In keeping with our usual format, the podcast is composed of a 10 min introductory section where we take a look at  the latest trends in aviation followed by a 25 min interview with our guest, Vueling’s CEO Alex Cruz.

In today’s introductory section we review the importance of response times in social media and the ongoing debate over in-flight Wi-Fi and its different business model. During the interview with Alex we analyzed the following subjects:

Critical factors behind Vueling’s success (11:30)
Spanish market : The collapse of Spanair, high speed railways and Iberia’s new low cost subsidiary (13:40)
Vueling’s Spanglish advertising and its cloud (22:00)
Strategy: Hybrid, but only if cost leader (24:42)
Vueling’s marketing channels (26:50)
Alex Cruz’s view on social media (28:40)
Social media ROI for Vueling (29:50)
Rapid fire round (35:00)

(After you fill out the short form below, …

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Airlines in Transition conference in Istanbul, organized by CAPA. The main draw was the list of leading airline CEOs who’re at the helm of mostly “hybrid” carriers – those that are neither legacy, nor purely LCC. The discussion that ensued over the couple of days at Ciragan Palace was thought provoking for sure.

And since I didn’t have to speak for the second time in the same week (first being the Eyefortravel summit in London), it was good to sit back and just be a sponge. I’m sharing here some of my key observations, as well as quotes from some of the CEOs at the conference.

[caption id="attachment_6998" align="aligncenter" width="613" caption="If only flying was this simple.."][/caption]
1) Cost Leadership is critical
Time and again, we were reminded that a low-cost base is the most critical factor in making an airline successful. Alex Cruz, Vueling’s CEO emphasized that while they may consider code-sharing with airlines other than Iberia in the future, it will only be done if there are no incremental costs. He shared the example of how …

By now, Estonian Air is quite a superstar on social media having done a number of innovative campaigns on Facebook followed up by the World’s First Social Loyalty Program. And when we chose them as one of the three big guns to vote for in the March round of SimpliFlying Heroes, Estonian Air trumped KLM and SAS despite stiff competition from them. We reached out to Tero Taskila, the CEO of Estonian Air and he was kind enough to oblige us with some juicy tidbits about the story of the airline’s rise as a social-media presence. Previously, he has done an exclusive podcast with us – check it out for some inside scoops on Estonian Air and its plans for this year.

 
The Growth Story
The forerunner of Estonian Air social media was an old-fashioned customer forum that gave official, but informal answers to airline-related questions. This was the first user-generated online content and gave Esstonian Air confidence when new forms arrived. They continued with a blog where they shared slightly longer articles of public interest. This became a channel to explain background of news, route development etc.

Estonian Air’s focus has always …

In this fourth episode of our SimpliFlying Podcasts we take a closer look at the world of loyalty, starting with an in-depth discussion about the current state of the loyalty industry and then moving on to an interesting interview with Gabi Kool, CEO of Baltic Miles.

As usual the first, insights part of the podcast is free and it also contains a snippet of the interview with Gabi while the full interview with the industry expert – in this instance, Gabi Kool – comes at a price of only USD 19.

You can listen to the free version below in which Shashank Nigam, the CEO of SimpliFlying and Marco Serusi, our Community Engagement Executive, discuss and dissect the state of the loyalty industry. Alternatively, subscribe to it on our iTunes channel:

(c)2012. SimpliFlying Podcasts
Note: The HTML5 player above should work with most …

What’s the key to engaging customers in this time and age? For Martijn van der Zee, senior vice president of e-commerce at Air France KLM, the answer is simple: Get with the times, embrace failure and always listen to what your customers tell you.

We recently recorded a podcast with Martijn in which he shares some exclusive tidbits about KLM’s secrets to social media success: you can buy it at a special price of $19 here.

Late last year, a group of executives gathered for a social media presentation at a conference held in the Netherlands. Among the attendees was Martijn van der Zee, senior vice president of e-commerce at Air France KLM, who had with him a slide from a new initiative they were experimenting with. Little did he know how popular it would be at the conference – and on the Internet. Shortly after his presentation, the slide found its way online and became a viral hit, attracting millions of viewers worldwide.

The name of the initiative? Meet and Seat, a service that lets you use either Facebook or LinkedIn to view the profiles of other passengers on the same flight and choose your seat partner. The service …

Some of you already know that we have an active YouTube channel - we call it SimpliFlyingTV - where we regularly post interesting airline-branding and AvGeek videos, often including exclusive interviews with airline executives. A week or so ago, we hit the magical 1,000,000 (we just couldn’t resist putting those zeros there!) views mark – hence, we’ve decided to celebrate this milestone by offering our readers a selection of the very best videos from our channel.

 
Inside the Boeing 787 Dreamliner cabin
The launch of the 787 Dreamliner has been one of the most exciting aviation landmarks of the past few years and our readers will remember that our CEO Shashank Nigam and Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal were recently able to fly on one of these aircraft at the Singapore Air Show. Long before that however, back in 2009, Shashank was able to obtain an exclusive interview with Boeing’s Colleen Rainbolt and tour the inside of a 787.

The video below was published back in 2009 and has been viewed over 670,000 times.

 
Bombardier CSeries Cabin Tour
Staying with the “cabin” theme, the second video we’ve selected for you is an exclusive visit to another innovative aircraft, the keenly anticipated Bombardier C-series.

 
Air New …

The third episode of SimpliFlying Podcasts features KLM’s Vice President for e-commerce Martijn Van Der Zee who explains the secrets behind the airline’s constantly innovative social media strategy and their latest, potentially game-changing KLM meet and seat social-seating initiative.

The interview is preceded, as usual, by a free industry insights section where SimpliFlying’s CEO Shashank Nigam and Community Engagement Manager Marco Serusi discuss the latest industry news, focusing on the Singapore air show and the marked shift in power from Europe to Asia.

You can listen to the free version below (industry insights) or subscribe to it on our iTunes channel:

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Malaysia Airlines, for quite some time now, has been a star on social media. They’ve received a fair bit of coverage on SimpliFlying in the past year or two for the excellent work they’ve done, and were, notably, one of the finalists in the SimpliFlying Social Media Awards 2011 for their MHBuddy initiative. Not surprisingly, when we chose them as one of the three big guns to vote for in the February round of SimpliFlying Heroes, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) trumped Finnair and Delta despite stiff competition from them. We reached out to Hisham, who is Head of Social Media and Innovation and the star behind MAS’s social media efforts, and he was kind enough to oblige us with some juicy tidbits about the story of the airline’s rise as a major social-media presence.

As Hisham says, it’s hard to imagine not having a social media channel nowadays, but only a few years ago, when brands were still floundering on social media, Malaysia Airlines, after cosying up in social media, set some clear objectives: to stay in touch with their customers and to understand their preferences so that MAS …

It might seem like an anxious start to the new year for AirAsia X, which recently announced that it would be introducing a daily KL-Sydney service and terminating all its flights to Europe and India. Far from being in the doldrums, it’s all part of the airline’s strategy to refocus and strengthen its brand, as its CEO Azran Osman-Rani shared with SimpliFlying in our latest airline strategy podcast.

Listen to the exclusive podcast below.

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(c) 2012 SimpliFlying Podcasts

Note: The HTML5 player above should work with most modern browsers including those in mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone. However, if you’re having trouble playing the file, please use the flash player at the bottom of this post. Please also note that the podcast above has only a snippet of the interview with Azran. To delve deeper into the mind of …