Power to the people: Twitter vs Airlines

Posted by anthonykuo , Aug, 2009 @ 11:05 am

Did an airline do something to piss you off? Bump you off an overbooked flight? Leave you stranded at an airport because you were so delayed the connecting flight wouldn’t wait? Break your clearly marked FRAGILE THIS SIDE UP luggage?

Before the rise of Twitter, the best customers could do was make angry phone calls, send out persistent and indignant letters, and complain loudly to their friends. But Twitter is now making it easier to broadcast your frustrations to the entire world, and it’s incredibly bad PR for airline companies.

On last Wednesday morning, Twitter’s featured posts about airlines included the following:

“Screw american airlines. Every plane has Been broken. Gah. So done,” read one post from Twitter user sheissilenttoo.

“Shame on you Continental Airlines,” read another post from user DiscoverU.

“United airlines, you are the bane of my existence,” user elnodonle wrote. [Reuters]

It’s a growing pain for airlines, who are cutting service amid a hurting economy, but the worst is when someone manages to make their gripes go viral. Dave Carroll had a $2000 guitar broken when careless ground operators tossed it on board the plane’s cargo hold.

“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me athttp://twitter.com/DaveCarroll .” [Youtube]

Video 1 has had over 5 MILLION views, and “United breaks guitars” is still one of the hot trending topics on Twitter. Ouch.

But maybe this consumer pressure will force airlines to behave better, and make flying a more pleasant experience for all of us.

Tags: airline, airplane, continental, frustration, transportation, twitter, united