Various airlines -Twitter handles on aircraft liveries

Airlines are one of the leading industries in the use of social media for customer service and marketing communication. Although not the first airline to do so, Aer Lingus have recently added their twitter handle to one of their Airbus fleet.

With just 12,000 followers on Twitter at the time of launch (in comparison American Airlines has over 615,000), the modest following is being serviced by Aer Lingus every weekday, and since placing their Twitter handle on the A320 the airline has gained an increase in following by 25%.

Other airlines have picked up on using hashtags and twitter handles like Aer Lingus. For example Virgin America’s A320 aircraft named #nerdbird has recently had it’s own themed competition.

Also, in response to Aer Lingus’ new twitter handle on site mediabistro , JetBlue were quick to respond, mentioning one of their aircraft has had joined the fray with “#Follow @JetBlue” flying the network since July 2011.

Facebook has also had it’s time on aircraft liveries too, with Emirates adorning one of it’s fleet with a “one million fans” facebook thumb .

Social media is becoming an increasingly effective communication medium for airlines and recently even KLM crew now encourage pax onboard to contact the airline via social media when making the “thank you for flying” announcement after the aircraft has landed.