The Iceland volcano eruptions have had a very “interesting” impact on travel throughout Europe. The skies over Ireland and most of Europe have been practically empty for the last few days.
This is an “act of God”. It’s not something that you could have planned for or expected and while airlines have a “duty of care” unto their passengers this mess is also costing them millions of Euro.
What has, however, been very interesting to watch is how the various airlines have been handling communications.
British Airways have an official Facebook page, but they’re not updating it.
Aer Lingus – if they have an official Facebook page it’s hard to find. There seem to be about a half dozen pages, but I don’t think any of them are official. In any case their communications aren’t exactly stellar.
RyanAir – No idea if they have an official page or not. There are active fan pages though ..
KLM, however, is the true star.
Prior to the Icelandic volcanic ash grounding Europe KLM had already been using Facebook to promote themselves using some pretty quirky marketing techniques.
Once the issues with the flights arose they took complete “ownership” of the communications medium and have been doing an absolutely fantastic job at letting people know exactly what is going on.
Aer Lingus, who I was meant to be flying with twice this week, have been pretty much silent. Sure, they update their flight disruption page a couple of times a day, but you wouldn’t want to be relying to heavily on them!