Note: Earlier this month, we announced a revamp of the SimpliFlying Heroes initiative, giving our readers a greater say in whom we choose by adopting a transparent voting system. In a keenly contested round that saw about 3000 votes pour in over the course of a week, Pooja Dua of SpiceJet emerged the winner, having received almost half of the total votes submitted! Read more about SpiceJet’s excellent social media initiative led by Pooja below.

Even though India is the world’s fastest-growing domestic market in aviation, it is not yet known for airlines that are superstars in engaging or offering customer service via social media. Or at least, until now. Last year, SpiceJet, a leading domestic low-cost carrier in India, launched the Bombardier Q400 in a market that’s traditionally sceptical and scared of flying turboprops (popularly classified as the “planes with fans outside”).  What’s more, they chose the untested waters of social media for propelling their route-launch and tasted tremendous success, achieving over 88% load-factor in the first two weeks itself. Moreover, they also earned countless new fans, followers and increasing engagement manifold on their social media channels. So how did they achieve this? We reached out to …

When you walk down the scorching tarmac at the Dubai Air Show, you’ll spot an unmissable “igloo” amongst the chalets and aircraft displays. That “igloo” houses the brand new Bombardier CSeries cabin mockup and the flight deck, which was unveiled at Dubai Air Show for the first time.

Amidst talk of re-engining or stretching of narrow-body jets by Airbus, Boeing and Embraer, the CSeries remains the only brand-new aircraft. And that means it’s not an incremental, but a disruptive change over existing technologies. Having toured the cabin mockup once, over a year ago, I had the opportunity to be back in the final mockup (before the real plane is built) at the Dubai Air Show 2011.

I’m sharing here a video in the cockpit, with Chet Fuller, the SVP of Sales, Marketing and Asset Management at Bombardier, and another with Sam Cherry, Director of Product Strategy (who led the original tour a year ago) sharing what’s new. Great fun for an #avgeek like me and certainly for the passenger when this beauty takes to the air. Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVa8amVPig[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb3ncSGZB4k[/youtube]
Disclosure: Bombardier Commercial Aircraft is a SimpliFlying client and among …

During a lot of conferences I speak at, the discussions are around what the ROI of social media is, for airlines. While we have addressed this through our multiple case studies of how airlines drive revenue and results through social media, one of the best examples of this recently has been the Indian budget airline – SpiceJet. They launched the Bombardier Q400 in India for the first time on regional routes and managed to achieve an 88% load factor in the first two weeks of operations after primarily reaching out to customers about the new product through social media.

It started out as an up-hill task, because Indians have typically not been the most keen to fly turbo-props and battling this mindset was the biggest challenge. Moreover, SpiceJet wasn’t flying these planes on major routes like Delhi-Mumbai, but secondary cities like Hyderabad-Goa – and there was a need to create destination awareness in specific segments.

The strategy developed leveraged on potential travelers educating one another about the new aircraft and learning about destinations – all through a series of contests on Facebook and Twitter….

The Bombardier CSeries aircraft is probably the only thing that both Airbus and Boeing agree about – that it’s a real threat to their hold on the narrow-body jet market. Due to enter service in 2013, the CSeries will be the first new aircraft to be built since the Boeing 787, and will be flown by the likes of Swiss International Airlines and Republic Airways.

Probably because it’s the largest jet being built by Bombardier, which is well known for regional aircrafts like the Q400, there are lots of innovations both inside and outside the cabin. I was privileged to be led on a cabin tour of the aircraft mock-up at Bombardier HQ in Montreal, followed by an in-depth tour of the aircraft’s aeronautical capabilities, by Sam Cherry – a Director at Bombardier who knows the product inside-out. And for the first time one the web, SimpliFlying has videos of what would exclusively be shown to airlines when they’re making a purchase decision.

The following video is of the CSeries cabin tour, which highlights the key game-changing features in passenger comfort being introduced …