AIRLINE MARKETING BENCHMARK REPORT October 2017 and Issue 61
TRAVEL KIOSK BY LUFTHANSA
BEHIND EVERY SEAT BY SOUTHWEST
THE LAUNCH OF JOON
BY AIR FRANCE
WELCOME Published by aviation marketing strategy consulting firm SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Report contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the next stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the field of marketing and corporate communications. The monthly reports also help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives. For any questions about the report, please contact Dirk Singer at dirk@simpliflying.com.
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INSIDE This issue features: 1. American Airlines Sports Lounge 2. easyJet DIY Sprinkle 3. JTA - Jimbee Shark 4. Joon - The launch of Joon 5. KLM - Flight Upgrade 6. Lufthansa - Lufthansa Travel Kiosk 7. Norwegian - Norwegian Tail-fin Heroes 8. Southwest - Behind Every Seat 9. Air Transat - Vacation is calling 10. Virgin Australia Here’s to Looking Up
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AMERICAN AIRLINES AMERICAN AIRLINES SPORTS LOUNGE
This October issue features a number of American Airlines already advertises airlines who created immersive events heavily in Canary Wharf, public transport such as pop ups. billboards advertising its 16 daily flights to New York are prominent. For example, we’ve included an article about easyJet’s ‘Cafe van der Sprinkles’, The airline also has a track record of while our cover story features Lufthansa’s promoting sports events to office workers ‘Travel Kiosks’ where they used live video and businesses in the district, for example to connect shoppers in German cities with it sponsors the annual giant screens kiosk owners in North America and Asia. broadcasting action from the Wimbledon tennis tournament. At the same time as easyJet opened its Sprinkle Cafe in London’s Leicester The thinking is obviously that sports is Square, American Airlines was across a big part of corporate culture in major town in the Canary Wharf financial district companies and financial institutions, and with a pop-up “Transatlantic Sports as a result American Airlines has tapped Lounge.” into this.
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The “Transatlantic Sports Lounge” is based outside Canary Wharf tube station, one of the busiest in London. Visitors are greeted by American Airlines flight attendants before being invited to visit the lounge. Guests then sample American Airlines’ gourmet drinking and dining, as well as luxury private booths and areas to work and relax in. The immersive experience also gives guests the chance to be coached in, and then test, their American Football throwing skills to win flights to key US destinations. At the same time, American Airlines has launched a geo-fencing campaign involving London taxis. Apparently the first ad campaign to use geo-fencing on a moving object (in this case a black cab), the campaign sees ads being served onto mobile phones as each black cab crosses town. As with the pop-up sports lounge in Canary Wharf, the idea is to target affluent consumers. According to taxi ad firm ‘Ubiquitous, which helped develop the campaign, London black cabs travel in areas populated by the ABC1 demographic.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY This is a good campaign because it is targeted. The number of people seeing the campaign will probably be in the tens of thousands, with far fewer actually experiencing the sports lounge for themselves. However, out of those tens of thousands, a very high proportion will be people who have both the income and the need (because of their jobs) to travel to the USA, making them a prime target audience for American
EASYJET - DIY SPRINKLES
easyJet has a track-record of teaming up with the Dutch tourist authorities in creating immersive experiences and onstreet activity in the UK. We’ve covered some of these campaigns in the past.
campaign, easyJet created what was called “a gateway to a surreal adventure”.
Essentially this was a piece of immersive theatre in London’s Shoreditch hipster district where visitors were taken on a For example, last September coinciding “whistle-stop tour through contemporary with its recently launched “Why Not?” Holland.”
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Fast forward almost a year and easyJet Visually the stunt worked out well for opened a ‘Sprinkle Cafe’ in Leicester easyJet, with sprinkle photos appearing Square, or ‘Cafe van der Sprinkles’. on social media as well as in Londonfocused, foodie and travel websites such The cafe did exactly what it said, it served as Time Out, Lonely Planet and the Hot Londoners sugared ‘sprinkles’ on toast. Dinners blog. Why sprinkles? Because apparently more than 14 million kilos of it are consumed every year in the Netherlands. On approaching the cafe, guests entered through a plane door, where they were able to order from a “DIY Sprinkle menu” choosing a base, their favourite sprinkles and what was called a ‘Dutch art template’to create an “edible master piece.” At the same time, easyJet worked with food artists “The Meringue Girls”, who created edible art pieces such as Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY easyJet has taken a successful idea (an immersive experience around a destination) and collaboration (with the Dutch tourist board) and built on it. Though the principles of the activity are the same as last year, the implementation is both different and very creative. Exposure on social media and on food and travel websites also ensured that many more people heard about the campaign than just those who saw it live in London.
JOON - THE LAUNCH OF JOON
Over the Summer, Air France got a lot of media attention when it announced that it was launching a new airline aimed at millennials (18-35 year olds), called “Joon” - similar to ‘Jeune’, meaning young in French. In a statement the airline claimed that Joon would be “aimed at a young working clientele, the millennials (18 to 35 yearolds), whose lifestyles revolve around digital technology.”. The initial images of the blue “instagramable” uniforms led website The Verge to quip that Joon was “basically Muji, but in airline form.” 8
Tickets for Joon then went on sale in late September, albeit from the Air France website. Other than a YouTube channel, Joon didn’t appear to have any online properties of its own at time of writing.
follows the corporate message that Joon is a “roof top bar”, “an entertainment channel”, a “personal assistant”, a “fashion designer” and an airline.
Each of these statements underpins a The YouTube channel currently hosts perceived benefit of flying Joon. For a short video produced by French example, the personal assistant message advertising agency ‘BETC’ ties into Joon linking up with Airbnb. Two dancing flight attendants in electric Initial destinations from December include blue outfits appear in the video which Barcelona, Porto, Lisbon and Berlin with
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the idea being that long-haul routes will A straw-poll of millennials we carried out be introduced from 2018. in a co-working space, which houses tech start-ups echoed what Mashable wrote. The fact that Joon is now open for bookings has been extensively covered One millennial tech marketer told us ” I by mainstream media ranging from the do not go on planes to eat organic food, Irish Times to Reuters. I do not goon planes to look at stewards in sneakers, I do not want to pay extra for However, some of the media that really cr*p ‘quality’ stuff. millennials actually read has been a lot more sceptical about the whole operation. “I want to get from A toB. If this was €1 Mashable for example wrote a damning more expensive than something else, I piece saying that Joon was “beyond would not book with them. I’d happily cringe” and it would “pigeon hole millions stand for an hour or two to get to Berlin of people into a few, damning stereotypes. if it cost €30.” Another said, “the whole Mashable commented that Air France brand does a feel a bit like “what do kids “underestimates millennials ability to see these days like - oh Airbnb and organic behind the buzzwords.” things and VR”
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KEY TAKE-AWAY As we’ve demonstrated, the reaction to Joon hasn’t been completely positive. We wonder if some of that is due to the fact that tickets went on sale before the Joon brand had much of a social media and web presence - surely a must if your aim is to appeal to the under 35s. An online brand would have added a bit more personality, and more importantly authenticity, to Joon beyond what you see in the one minute video and a two page press release.
Aviation industry blogger One Mile At a Time was also lukewarm: “The whole millennial twist is just a bit much for me. I get they’re trying to make this sound appealing, but the differences here basically come down to having flight attendants that are dressed more casually, more organic buy on board options, and virtual reality headsets in long-haul business class.”.
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As it is, it is too early to tell how Joon will develop. It may well become a huge success for Air France but the airline needs to start turning the buzz-words into reality. As Mashable pointed out, just like other age groups, millennials are perfectly capable of looking beyond brand speak.
JTA - JIMBEE SHARK
In this edition, we’ve featured several thanks to the colourful liveries on the side examples of airlines making use of virtual of its Boeing 737s. reality. This started in 2012, when JTA partnered For example KLM has produced a VR with the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium to film (soon tobe turned into an app) to feature a “Jinbei” (or ‘Jimbee’), pattern highlight its long-haul services for North on the side of a plane - Jinbei being the American passengers, while youth- Japanese for Whale Shark. focused airline ‘Joon’ will feature VR as part of its in-flight entertainment. The first specially painted B-737,in blue, was joined by a second one in pink in Another airline using VR in a campaign 2014. is JAL subsidiary, Japan Transocean Air (JTA). JTA flies domestic routes within JTA’s newest “Jimbee” jet will be a Japan and has made a name for itself Boeing 737-800, which will enter service
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in November. However, as well as just JTA is claiming a worldwide ‘first’ with painting the plane in shark colours, the this campaign, as passengers will not airline is using VR to provide a more have to download app on their phones. interactive experience for passengers. Passengers will be able to use the inflight WiFi to connect their phones to VR glasses. They’ll then be able to see the airplane “swimming” with fish and other sea creatures in the sky. The experience is delivered via a two minute video which show cases Okinawan nature, including whale sharks, clown fish, pink jellyfish. The idea is to showcase Okinawa for passengers travelling there before they arrive.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Virtual Reality is not new. Painting your aircraft in colourful or unusual liveries certainly isn’t new. Nevertheless we really liked how these two elements are being combined. Allowing passengers to see the aircraft ‘swimming’ with fish on the way to Okinawa while in-flight is a novel and fun way to bring the destination to life, promote JTA as a brand, and provide inflight entertainment.
KLM - FLIGHT UPGRADER
How do you get people to ‘trade up’ from a cheaper airline and get them to try your product? For KLM in the USA the solution has been to use virtual reality. In particular, KLM released a virtual reality tour called Flight Upgrader. Flight Upgrader was first of all unleashed on passengers at New York’s JFK Airport who were flying with budget competitors. When passengers at JFK put on the VR headsets, they found themselves in a KLM long-haul cabin, complete with in-flight catering and in-flight entertainment.
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As the airline wrote in a statement launching the promotion, “Passengers can spend as much time on board the virtual KLM flight as they would like, so they will never have to face the harsh reality of a budget flight. The Upgrader lets them try out the inflight entertainment system for free, where they can watch an episode and ten minutes of a recent blockbuster without paying extra as they would on a budget flight.”
promotion is a fan. Fast Company magazine says it is “implicitly shaming economy travellers because they had no other choice...because there’s no better way to forget you’re in cramped flying box by pretending you’re in another, slightly better cramped flying box.”
In response, KLM told Fast Company that the campaign was meant to be ‘cheeky’ and ‘humorous’, though it admitted that it should have been more explicit in the campaign message that the airline’s economy fairs are “competitively priced Not everyone who has covered the vs budget carriers, especially when
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you start adding in the substantial fees for basic services that budget carriers chargeat every step along the journey. This campaign reminds usof two previous airline campaigns.
Meanwhile, several years ago SAS produced an app called “Time Killer” that was full of games such as ‘Spin the Hamster’ for passengers of other airlines toplay when their flight was delayed.
Earlier this year Lufthansa used virtual reality as a way of promoting its Premium Economy Cabin. Headsets were made available at the gate as a way of trying to encourage passengers to purchase last minute upgrades.
The aim was to promote the fact that the airline (at the time) was Europe’s most punctual airline. In fact, according to Tnooz, KLM’s idea is similarly to turn ‘Flight Upgrader’ into an app, so that people can experience KLM long-haul from their phones.
KEY TAKE-AWAY We disagree with Fast Company on this, the idea isn’t to shame passengers on LCCs, instead it is an eye-catching way to get them to look at what they might be missing, for not a lot more money. Of course, there is a wider question mark over whether virtual reality really is a good campaign mechanic, with technology industry website recently declaring that “This VR cycle is dead.”
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LUFTHANSA - LUFTHANSA TRAVEL KIOSK
In February, Lufthansa looked at how it could bring different international destinations to life for the German market. The outcome was the ‘ReiseKiosk’ or Travel Kiosk.
campaign is straight-forward. When people go on holiday they like to bring back souvenirs and local gifts for friends and family back home.
The execution however is extremely The Travel Kiosk made its first appearance innovative. The airline has created actual in Düsseldorf, before making its way to kiosk stands in German cities, which sell Frankfurt last month (September). items from different countries and cities around the world. The thinking behind the travel kiosk
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So far so good, except not did each kiosk have 3,500 items in stock, each one was linked upto four actual kiosks around the world (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Miami and New York) live.
The items themselves were fairly unusual and were the kind of things that would get people talking - as well as taking pictures of them and sharing them. For example, they included both Lemonade with Wasabi (from Tokyo) and Pancake Passers-by could talk to each vendor in toothpaste (from Miami). real time who thanks to the digital screens looked like they were manning the actual The campaign was developed by booth. Once they requested an item, the Lufthansa’s ad agency Kolle Rebbe, kiosk owner pressed a button and it was which has been working for the airline delivered in Germany. since 2011, and was responsible for its “Nonstop You” brand strap-line.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY As regular readers of this magazine will know, we’ve been sceptical of on-street and experiential campaigns in the past as there’s always the question of how do you get people who weren’t physically there to see it. That wasn’t a problem here, this campaign had a real wow factor that meant it got extensive coverage in the German (as well as in trade). It also nicely underpinned the ‘nonstop you’ message by literally giving shoppers in major German cities the chance to interact with someone half way around the world. Well done Lufthansa on coming up with, and carrying on with, a campaign that was really different and creative.
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NORWEGIAN - NORWEGIAN TAIL-FIN HEROES
One of the things that really stands out boundaries, challenged the established when looking at a Norwegian Air Shuttle and inspired others. plane are the tail-fins, which includes pictures of historical figures. Covering architecture, art, sport, literature, science, entertainment and These are the airline’s so-called ‘tail- with a category for “freedom fighters”, fin heroes’, which Norwegian says are the first tail-fin heroes were of course all personalities who have embodied its own Scandinavian. brand values in that they have “pushed the
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Mercury’s face would first of all adorn the side of a B-787 Dreamliner, followed by a B-737-800 later in the year. Every tail-fin hero provides Norwegian with a PR opportunity. Last year the Roald Dahl announcement got Norwegian a good spread of UK press coverage. Similarly, the Freddie Mercury unveiling has meant that Norwegian is getting exposure in media outlets that would normally not cover the airline, with ‘Team Rock’ and ‘Planet Rock’ being just two of the music focused websites covering the announcement. This changed as Norwegian branched out into other markets. In particular, the airline’s growing network of mediterranean and long-haul routes out of London Gatwick Airport has led to a series of British tail-fin heroes joining the fleet. Footballer Bobby Moore, airline entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker, pilot Amy Johnson, and author Roald Dahl can already be seen on Norwegian aircraft. In September, Norwegian unveiled a fifth British tail-fin hero. Coinciding with what would have been Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury’s 71st birthday, the airline announced that
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KEY TAKE-AWAY While lots of other airlines paint the side of their planes inPR-able livery (see the JTA article in this edition), ‘tail-fin heroes’is something that has become something unique to Norwegian. It’s a concept that has longevity (the list of possible heroes is almost endless), it supports the airline’s expansion into new markets, it gives Norwegian excellent press coverage every time a new hero is unveiled and as the Freddie Mercury example shows, it gets Norwegian in publications/ websites where it wouldn’t normally appear.
SOUTHWEST - BEHIND EVERY SEAT
It’s a truism that behind every journey number hovers over every person (3D, there is a story. This insight forms the 14C etc). basis of Southwest’s latest marketing campaign entitled ‘Behind Every Seat.’ The ad in turn links back to a microsite featuring 175 seats on one of Southwest’s Passenger stories, 175 to be exact, have newly introduced Boeing 737 Max-8 jets been collected for the campaign, some of that are due to enter service over the which have been incorporated into a TV course of this month. ad campaign. Clicking on some of the seats gives you a The launch ad ‘vignette’ looks at a series passenger story. It’s a great idea, but as of characters and personalities. This in practice producing 175 films all at once ranges from a sports coach motivating would have both been logistically hard his team to two new parents who have as well as expensive, some of the seats just adopted a child. On the ad, a seat (e.g. 12C, 12D, 13A, 13C and 13D) actually
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feed into the same narrative (that of the as one of the 175 ‘seats ’on the Southwest sports team featured in the ad). However micro-site. that does mean there’s scope to develop more of these stories over time. The thinking of the campaign is twofold. First of all, there is the opportunity The airline created additional buzz around to humanise the brand. As Ryan Green, the campaign through the Adventure Southwest’s vice president and chief Giveaway, a scavenger hunt that sent marketing officer said, “this campaign is fans running around ten Southwest cities an opportunity for us to remind the world for the opportunity to win a travel story that there is a personal reason someone of a lifetime. Some of the winners appear chose to fly Southwest Airlines.”
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Secondly, the campaign underpins Southwest’s on-going ‘transfarency’ message which talks up different features such as not being charged to change your flight or check in a bag. The overall campaign was developed by Austin (Texas) advertising agency GSD&M.
KEY TAKE-AWAY This is a great campaign that’s effective for three reasons. First of all the stories underpin some of the airline’s ‘transfarency’ messages. Secondly, it reminds everyone that travel is ultimately about people. And finally, it is scaleable. As we mentioned, only some of the individual passenger stories have so far been developed. With every story being a PR and social media opportunity, it means Southwest can get a lot of additional mileage from this campaign over the coming months.
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AIR TRANSAT - VACATION IS CALLING
What does going on vacation / holiday involve? Yes, it means going somewhere different to your everyday life where you can unwind, explore or discover. But iti s also a sensory experience, you see, hear, feel, smell and touch new things. This is a concept Russian airline S7 captured brilliantly in its ‘Best of Planets’ campaign, with an ad touching on the different senses narrated by Cosmonaut Andrey Borisenko.
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for travel and tourism is part of Transat employees’ DNA, and finds expression every day in a multitude of ways—and that’s why we wanted to highlight it in the campaign.” In addition to TV and online video advertising, the campaign is coming to life through billboards and out of home ads and via a social media campaign. In the UK, these ‘cabin crew’ tips were featured in one of the country’s biggest tabloid newspapers, the Daily Mirror, which published them in a guide on Canada’s major cities.
A campaign developed by Canadian advertising agency Sid Lee for airline Air Transat takes a very similar approach. Initially launched in 2016, the second iteration of the ‘Vacation is Calling” campaign launched last month (September). Using cabin crew to provide travel tips is a fairly common airline marketing mechanic. Vacation is Calling seeks to merge the world’s of ‘imagination and reality’. The To take just one example, Emirates has done original campaign involved people’s every everything from use its crew to talk about day lives being merged with vacation how to look good on long-haul flights, experiences. For example, a woman to doing a ‘through the lens’ project where lying on a bed finds herself lying the ocean, staff took over the airline’s Instagram while a manin a truck gets out to find a account. sailboat on the road.
KEY TAKE-AWAY
The new 2017 ads now include the airline’s flight attendants. For example, “People become fish” sees a flight attendant encouraging a passenger to swim beyond the caves in an unnamed destination, at which point we see her doing so. The idea is to showcase the cabin crew’s tips and favourite places indifferent sun destinations, or as Air Transat vice president GenevièveLeBrun put it, “This passion
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Air Transat is trying to do two very different things here. On one hand, it is trying to mentally transport people to a vacation destination and get them to imagine the sights and sounds they’ll see when they get there. On the other hand, it has now woven ‘cabin crew tips’ into campaign. You could argue that these two elements should be kept separate and that the campaign was more impactful last year when it only tried to do one of those things.
VIRGIN AUSTRALIA - HERE’S TO LOOKING UP
What’s “Uptimism”? It’s Virgin Australia’s play on optimisim. It’s a word that underpins the airline’s brand new campaign “Here’s to looking up. ”Developed by advertising agency DDB as a way to differentiate Virgin Australia more clearly from Qantas, the campaign aims to convey a sense of‘upbeat excitement’ and ‘opportunity.’
officer Inese Kingsmill put it, “Our new brand platform, ‘Here’s to looking Up’, recognises the evolution ofVirgin Australia and captures the spirit and values of our people and our guests.”
To launch the campaign, DDB produced a television and YouTube ad filmed in the Blue Mountains, Melbourne and Sydney.It features a group ofso-called ‘Uptimists’, such as a 30 year old rock-climber and Or as the company’s new chief marketing a 13year old Australian Football League
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(AFL) player who has been identified as a appear in the ad before linking back to the potential star of the future. main Virgin Australia website. At the same time, the airline released a “Virgin Australia Fan Report”, which tracked the levels of fan enthusiasm and noise in a stadium to a team’s results. The idea again being to tie Virgin Australia into energy, enthusiasm and a can-do spirit.
According to Virgin’s Inese Kingsmill, the ‘Looking Up’ campaign is a direct challenge to Qantas with it’s ‘Coming Home’ theme:
“There are essentially two airlines in the market and one of them owns coming home. And coming home is very nice, The different campaign elements point but the Virgin brand is anchored in the to a ‘Here’s to looking up’ micro-site, possibilities of takeoff, and what going which shows the different characters who places can be.”
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KEY TAKE-AWAY The comment from Virgin Australia’s chief marketing officer about the campaign perfectly encapsulates its thinking. If a competitor brand is doing one thing, can you do the opposite? So if Qantas is trying to own the concept of‘arriving’ then why not claim ‘departing’, and all the associations you can pin onto that, as something you own.
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ABOUT US
SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India. Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airpor ts on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space.
The firm also conducts MasterClasses to train and develop airline and airport teams to become self-sufficient in executing measurable and rewarding social campaigns. SimpliFlying’s growing list of clients includes Lufthansa, Emirates, Toronto Pearson Airport, Halifax International, KLIA, Jet Airways, LAN Airlines, airBaltic, Airbus and Bombardier. Get in touch at engage@simpliflying. com or visit simplifying.com.
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PRICING
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