If twenty years ago one had asked an airline marketing executive about the dangers that a bad experience, passed on through word of mouth, could represent for the company’s image and brand he/she would have probably laughed. And with some degree of reason too!

After all, those were the good old days when, if one passenger had a bad experience he would tell his friends and family who may or may not have told a slightly distorted version of the story to their friends and family members… and the story would pretty much have ended there.

However, in the age of Twitter, Facebook and instant 24/7 global communication, the story doesn’t quite end there anymore. Even one annoyed passenger out of a whole planeload has the power to share his experience not only with his friends and family but also with millions of complete strangers who may in turn share it with a million others.  And this time the story does NOT end there.

Moreover, according to recent research, 25% of social media users expect a response within an hour and 6% expect something within 10 mins!
Time to start thinking about social customer service!
Unfortunately, only a handful of airlines and airport seem …

Remember how Eurocontrol used social media to update travelers in the aftermath of the Icelandic volcanic eruption? Another crises, this time the Spanish Air traffic controllers strike, has caused the whole Spanish airspace to shut down. And AENA, the Spanish air traffic management organization has responded by using social media.

A brilliant analysis of the situation has been done by Miquel Ros on the AllPlane blog, and they’ve kindly allowed us to re-post their article here. It’s quite insightful as to how the events have unfolded. Enjoy the read!

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At the time of writing these lines the effects of the Spanish air controllers unannounced and almost total strike are still being felt throughout the whole South-Western European airspace. This industrial action has forced the closure of the entire Spanish airspace and gravely affected that of the surrounding countries (Portugal, Morocco), the chaos at airports has been total, more so when the controllers’ walk-away has coincided with the start of a five day holiday in Spain. The Spanish government has had to recur …

Aurelie Valtat is announced as June’s Simpliflying Hero.

We all know what happened when the volcano in Iceland erupted and resulted in utter chaos in the aviation world. We also saw how some airlines and aviation authorities around the world struggled to cope with servicing the customers, while others used the latest social media tools to engage and update them.

At SimpliFlying, we saw a paradigm shift in the way airlines handle crises management, in the age of social media. Instead of writing an article on it, we put together an info-graphic, that details the five key steps for managing crises, in the wake of the volcanic eruption. Both a PDF version, and a PPT version are available for download and printing. An Apple Keynote version will be available soon.

Please feel free to share it with your colleagues, print it out or use it in your presentations, as long as full credit is given to SimpliFlying.

Special thanks to Steve Frischling for help with the content, and Arno Ghelfi for the design.
Infographic – Five steps to successful crisis managment for airlines, in the age of social media [PDF]
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For the first time on the web (and in English!), in this exclusive interview with SimpliFlying, we hear directly from the horse’s mouth. Aurelie Valtat was the person leading Eurocontrol’s much talked-about ashcloud response, and personally helped out thousands of stranded passengers using social media.

On April 14, 2010, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano [i still can't pronounce the name!] resulted in chaos — more than 100,000 flight cancellations between April 15 and 21 — affecting millions of travelers, and the fallout cost the airline industry $1.7 billion. The silver lining was social media – and how airlines and authorities reached out to stranded passengers to help them out. And Eurocontrol led from the front. Eurocontrol’s efforts were much admired on this blog, and on other leading websites like Mashable.

In my conversation with Aurelie, she spoke at length about how she handled the tasks, challenges encountered and lessons learnt. Below is a summary of the exclusive video interview (Click here if you’re unable …