Brussels Airlines - FlightBall

Finnair - #FinnairTweets

In early June, Brussels Airlines flew the Belgian national soccer team (the Red Devils) to São Paulo for the 2014 World Cup. For this flight ‘SN2014’, Brussels Airlines painted one of its A330s in the Belgian Red Devils colours. Adding to the soccer theme, the aisle was lined with turf and the door panels separating Business Class from economy had life size action photos of Red Devils players (images here ). Brussels Airlines also came up with an original way to offer the public the chance to win a ‘fan flight package’ , called Flight Ball . Flightball works like a real football field except that players are replaced by planes flying in real-time over Begian airspace. To monitor the aircrafts, Brussels Airlines partnered with aircraft tracking provider Casper for the provision of real-time data, which turned actual airplanes into the virtual players in the game.

To participate in the ‘aircraft soccer game’, players had to log in to the Flight Ball website and were assigned an arbitrary opponent. They then added a virtual balloon, placed one goal post at the North Sea and another one in the Ardennes region of Belgium. The planes flying above Belgium at the time of the game would then play the virtual soccer game and the winner had to answer the contest question. Those answering the question correctly had the chance to be invited for the Flight Ball final.

The final was played on June 10 at the headquarters of Brussels Airlines — after which the winner directly boarded the same flight to Brazil as the Red Devils.