Airlines have always decided where and when they fly. And unless you live in a major hub, most of us have connecting flights before we arrive at our final destination. But what if airlines listened to their customers, instead of always flying the same routes. As it turns out, this is easier and faster than ever because of the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Living Social.
Imagine a group of 30 students in Richmond, Virginia that want to travel to Austin, Texas for South By Southwest. They want to leave at noon on Friday and return Sunday at 3:00. A direct flight would obviously be ideal. To book this flight, they input their desired flight on an airline website and commit to this flight schedule. The airline then puts a minimum booking requirement on that itinerary. Let’s say, if 300 more people commit to that same flight to Austin the airline will add the flight for that day.
Being the enterprising students that they are, the 30 of them tell everyone they know who might be going to SXSW in Richmond to book their flight. They get on social media and eventually they have reached the 300 person minimum and the airline confirms the flight and issues tickets.
This wouldn’t have been very feasible before the Internet and the proliferation of social networks, because getting real time information out to the right people and measuring the response was very hard. Now it’s trivial. Airlines can be driven by demand and better meet the needs of their customers.
As someone that loves to travel, but hates to fly, this idea makes so much sense. To my surprise, this is not entirely unprecedented. In 2010, Dutch airline, KLM, responded to demands for a direct flight to Miami for a music festival on Twitter. KLM added the flight if it could be filled. Reportedly, it was filled within 5 hours.
Perhaps with Google’s acquisition of ITA we’ll see some innovation in this space and shake up how airlines do business, making it more efficient for airlines as well as making it a more pleasant experience for the customer.
