Iberia - #SocialFlight

Iberia - #SocialFlight

Iberia announced via email on the 18th of July to its followers that at 8pm that evening they were to hold their first social media auction , whereby passengers could ‘virtually’ name the price they wanted to pay for a ticket on a special flight between Madrid and New York that left Madrid September 20th and returned the 25th.

The unique element of this online event was that the round-trip tickets started at 600 euros and the price dropped down 5 euros for every second that passed until someone decided to make the purchase at their chosen price. Once the first seat was bought, the whole process started again, until all 222 seats were sold.

The average price of the economy seat was sold at 361.2 euros, providing roughly a 40% discount on the starting bid. The reverse auction for this themed #socialflight attracted 1 million visitors online and with 26,000 people clicking simultaneously at one point, the server crashed. Iberia has created a dedicated website page with the names of the ‘winners’ and the prices each of them paid for this ‘auction flight’, out of the 17,000 people that submitted bids.

On board the flight there were additional social-themed amenities. Says Dimitris Bountolos, VP Customer Experience at Iberia, “The flight itself it has been developed with a lot of attention to all the details, everything is customized and shared via Instagram using the #IberiaSocialFlight hashtag. Each passenger found a personalized copy of the inflight magazine with his/her photo on their seat and received a special T-shirt.