A recent Ad Age article, How Twitter can Help or Hurt an Airline, accurately described why Southwest Airlines is a leader in their use of real-time communications to express their brand attributes. For example, when a recent flight encountered a large hole in the fuselage and was forced to land, customers weren't the only people tweeting about it -- the airline also started posting updates on their official twitter feed, including information about how every plane was to be inspected that night and that customers on the flight were given full refunds. As a result, Southwest was able to provide their information to the world well before news outlets were able to report on the incident.Virgin Atlantic has monitored tweets in real-time by passengers on flights and alerted flight crews within minutes of customer issues, allowing them to respond quickly. See my earlier post on PF Changs for another great example of this kind of real-time/real-world twitter usage.
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