Air Travel, Socially Speaking with @AAAESean

Introducing the 6th guest post in this new fly HIA blog mini-series, a discussion on how social media has altered the way we travel. Today’s guest blogger is Sean Broderick, a career aviation journalist and public relations pro who currently handles external communications for the American Association of Airport Executives, whose members represent some 850 airports. His responsibilities include managing the association’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Airports Shifting From Just Providing Connections To Making Them

One day this past July, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) suffered a partial power outage in two of its three terminals. The outage lasted about 90 minutes and affected certain key functions, including ticketing and concessions.

During the brown-out, followers of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) Twitter stream, @DCAirports, were kept abreast of the situation, including whether boarding passes could be printed on-site. They also were told that MWAA’s Web site was down, and that flight status checks should be done on individual airline Web sites.

This is but one real-life example of what Steven Frischling astutely notes is a shift in airport attitudes—a shift that is perhaps most visible on social media platforms. As he said in a blog post earlier in this series, “Social media has finally allowed airports to…have a voice of their own,” rather than relying on “the voices of others around them speaking for them.”

From my perspective, social media’s evolution hasn’t so much created this attitude shift as help expedite, illuminate, and solidify it. For years, airlines were the air travel industry’s principal brand-builders and loyalty-creators. From frequent flyer programs to dedicated business-class lounges, it was airlines connected with passengers. Airports simply provided a place for passengers to connect.

For a list of reasons long enough to fill another blog post, those days are over—and I think that’s a good thing. For everyone.

Airports are working diligently to onnect with their customer base, often in tandem with airlines. In the social media arena, for instance, market-specific fare sales are pushed via airport Facebook pages, which is logical. If you live in Harrisburg, does it make more sense for you to seek out good travel deals on, say, Delta’s Facebook page, or on HIA’s? Put another way, which one of those Facebook pages is better equipped to deliver information that’s relevant to Central Pennsylvania residents?

As for the airlines, they now have permanently rooted local partners—the airports they serve—cultivating meaningful relationships with existing and potential customers. What better way to jump-start a new route, promote a fare sale, or simply strengthen a connection than to tap into this pipeline?

Passengers—the most important part of the travel equation, of course—are finally getting recognized, catered to, and served by the one variable in their own travel equations that’s sure to remain constant: their local airports. Think about it: for the last 40 years, the greater Harrisburg community has been served by dozens of airlines, but only one commercial-service airport: HIA.

So how can passengers benefit from this shift? Social media is a pretty good place to start. “Like” the Facebook pages of airports you frequent, and follow them on Twitter. Yes, this basically grants them permission to market directly to you, and the smart airports will. But the really smart ones will go well beyond the sales pitch—their marketing and communications plans will incorporate customer service, partnerships with tenants (like airlines and concessionaires) that have useful information for you, and the type of general relationship-building effort that makes airports valuable partners, not just self-motivated service providers.

Most importantly, remember that social media is, well, social. Provide feedback, both positive and negative, via the channels that airports use. Participate in the process, and they’ll be obliged to reciprocate. The result will be a better-informed traveler—and a better travel experience.

Which airports and airlines are you actively engaging with on Twitter and Facebook? Where are you turning to to find answers to your air travel related questions?

Air Travel, Socially Speaking with @CrankyFlier

Introducing the 2nd guest post in this new fly HIA blog mini-series, a discussion on how social media has altered the way we travel. Today's guest blogger is Brett Snyder. Brett is the President and Chief Airline Dork at Cranky Flier, LLC. In addition to his blog, Brett operates Cranky Concierge air travel assistance service. Today Brett shares his thoughts on Delta Air Lines reservations and the Twitter movement.

Next stop on the Delta tour? Reservations. I was particulary excited about talking to Allison Ausband, who runs the reservations team, because Delta is doing some really interesting things. Besides using some more unique flexible work schedules, Delta is also bringing together social media with reservations to create some spectacularresults.

There are about 5,000 reservations agents at Delta, and they’re scattered around several call centers around the world. Well, at least 4,000 of them are. The rest are actually home-based, similar to what JetBlue does with its agents and the team is humming right along. Right now, there are also call centers in South Africa and Jamaica that take calls from the US, but the long term plan is to bring that all back in-house. Yep, that’s right. Love it.

But of all those agents, there are eight that are particularly interesting to me. Those eight (and growing) make up the DeltaAssist team, the group that manages @DeltaAssist on Twitter. Though the group started off handling issues only during business hours in Atlanta (something I criticized here), it has already been expanded to work on weekends. It will eventually become a 24×7 operation, and that’s where it needs to be. And really, it needs to be there very soon. You can’t have part-time coverage for a 24 hour operation.

The agents on this team are given wide-ranging power to resolve any issues that arise, and if they can’t, they contact whomever needs to fix it. Ultimately, Allison views this team as just another line of business, like the reservations sales team.

Though the benefit this team brings seems obvious to me, I asked Allison how Delta was measuring success. Her first answer was this.

What we’re reading makes it worthwhile. Even if it’s not a favorable comment, it’s real-time learning.

While I agree with that, I can’t imagine that’s how they measure success, so I pressed on and she gave me two answers.

1. Fewer complaints
2. Fewer calls into the reservations center

Allison explained that the response has been phenomenal. The group tells customers that “someone’s listening in cyberspace and there’s a human behind it.” In other words, it gives a human face to a generally impersonal process.

While Delta hasn’t fully fleshed out its metrics yet, it likes the trends that it’s seeing. DeltaAssist agents can respond more quickly to customers when they’re in trouble. Since it’s not on the phone, the agents can multi-task and be more productive. And best of all (in my opinion)? Twitter limits you to 140 characters, so it makes customers get to the point. That lets the team help more people with less time. In fact, I had the chance to use it this week for a Cranky Concierge client, and I think that highlights how efficient this is.

crankyflier: looks like flt 63 ATL TPA may cxl – trying to help [client confirmation #] – is it possible to reaccom even if no cxl yet?
DeltaAssist: We can, although the only flight with 2 seats still open is leaving @ 10:50p. ^WG
crankyflier: Well, can we grab those seats and then they can still hang around 63 to see if it goes earlier?
DeltaAssist: All set. ^WG

Fantastic. No need to call anyone, and you have to explain it very concisely. The problem, of course, is that some might abuse the system, and I asked if they’d seen that so far. In her Southern accent, Allison slyly notes, “We have some regulars.” And that’s a constant issue for the airline – figuring out how to help people and when. Allison knows that Delta can’t respond to everything in cyberspace, so the airline is turning toward technology to help find what needs urgent assistance and what might not.

DeltaAssist will never take over the job of reservation agents completely, but it will be a strong complement. Regardless of the channel that people use, all agents are now being reminded that there are rules, but they aren’t in stone.

“We want agents to know, they’re listening to the customer. They need to do what’s right.”

That sort of empowerment isn’t something that we’ve seen at legacy airlines in recent times, and I hope it doesn’t ring hollow in this case. Granted, after my recentguest post from a former Delta reservations agent, it does make you wonder how easy it will be to make this change in empowerment stick. When I was there, they were sending reservations agents into recurrent training to make it clear that they had more power to make things right.

It also helps that there is complete support from senior management.

“We wouldn’t have been able to get all these resources if [the execs] didn’t believe in what we were doing.”

That’s true, and it’s certainly welcome.

Guest Blog: In-Flight WiFi Availability on Airlines at MDT

We have asked a few select guest bloggers to join us on this blog as part of a six week mini series on hot button aviation topics that effect you, the traveler. These guest bloggers will no doubt enrich your travel experience by bringing in their own various perspectives and experiences from different horizons. Today we would like to introduce Dan Webb as the fifth guest blogger*.

Dan Webb, is sophomore at Bryant University. After a year of thinking, he decided to major in business administration, concentrate in finance, and minor in actuarial math and supply chain management.

He absolutely loves planes ever since his first flight from Boston on a Northwest Airlines Boeing 757-200. When he was young, he made an airport made out of Legos, and drew the “Dan Airways” route map in inflight magazines my dad would bring home from trips (he still collects them to this day). He actually keeps track of all the flights he's ever been on. He's fairly confident that he wants to enter the airline industry after college. His professional profile is available on LinkedIn.

You can find more about Dan and his aviation/travel interests at his blog Things in the Sky and by listening to his podcast Airplane Geeks online. You can also follow Dan on Twitter.

Today Dan will share with us the in-flight wireless internet availability on the airline partners at Harrisburg International Airport (MDT).

It really impresses me how quickly inflight Wi-Fi has been installed on aircraft across the country. I've yet to be on a flight with the service, but friends who have really enjoy it. Here's a summary on the availability of Wi-Fi on carriers that fly out of MDT:

Air Canada
Like many airports in the Northeast, MDT gets its Air Canada service from Air Georgian Becch 1900 aircraft, which have no Wi-Fi. Air Canada has been testing the service on flights to Los Angeles from Toronto and Montreal, but there's no word yet on if they will expand it to the rest of their network.

AirTran
AirTran was the second carrier to get Wi-Fi on all of its aircraft, so if you're flying them out of Harrisburg, you'll have the service! The only exception is flights operated by AirTran's partner SkyWest, but that's a small operation based out of Milwaukee.

American
It was simply fantastic news when American announced that it would be returning to MDT with flights to Chicago O'Hare in April. Unfortunately, none of the flights to MDT will have Wi-Fi as they will be operated by regional subsidiary American Eagle. Nevertheless, it could be available on a connecting flight. American has Internet service on all of its 767-200 aircraft, and some MD-80s and 737-800s. You can check if your flight has Wi-Fi with it's handy widget.

Continental
The airline is still figuring out what it's doing with Wi-Fi. It will be testing out Aircell's Gogo service (the industry leader) on 21 757-300 aircraft, while the 737-900s are getting a different service from LiveTV. So, we'll just have to see what happens. Commutair flights to Cleveland and Newark from MDT won't have the serivce, though.

Delta
Like other carriers, service to/from MDT won't have Wi-Fi has they're operated by regional partners, but the service could be available on connecting flights. But Delta has made great progress - pretty much the entire pre-merger Delta fleet has Wi-Fi. So if you're connecting to a mainline flight out of Cincinnati or Atlanta, there's a great chance of Wi-Fi availability. The airline is just getting started on the Northwest fleet, however, so if you're going through Detroit your chances aren't the greatest.

United
The airline has only installed Wi-Fi on its 14 757-200s that fly to Los Angeles and San Francisco from New York as part of it's P.S. (premium service) brand. There are no plans in place to expand the service right now, but that could always change.

US Airways
US Airways is planning on installing Wi-Fi on A321 aircraft this year, but that hasn't started yet. Currently, the airline doesn't fly that aircraft to/from MDT.

*The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Harrisburg International Airport.

AirTran Airways to Expand Service at HIA

AirTran Airways offers nonstop daily service to Orlando International Airport (MCO) and will begin seasonal nonstop daily service to Atlanta International Airport (ATL) on June 11th through September 8th!

You don't have to stop at Atlanta, you can connect to more than 35 destinations like: Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and more. View the available connections on AirTran Airway's interactive route map.

For Orlando & Atlanta fares and reservations, visit www.airtran.com, don't forget to use FAA Code: MDT.

Will you fly Delta or AirTran Airways nonstop from MDT?