US Airways’ Hudson Crash Begets Social Media Flight

Senior US Airways pilot Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger was gaining 215 fans a minute on a Facebook page set up to honor him, within days he had 300,000 fans and 14,000 wall posts. According to Virtue’s Social Media index, US Airways reached a 3-day average 0f 135%. Most know by now that the first image of the US Airlines Hudson River crash appeared on Twitpic via Twitter. The photo, taken with what looks to be an iPhone by a passenger on one of the ferries that rescued survivors, beat out the major media as usual.

While this is a great story of survival, it is also an educational story for businesses. It took eye witnesses to report the crash first, it took consumers to launch fan pages on social networks. In a climate where people are frustrated by big business’ lack of transparency and communication, their excess and greed, a story like this should have been a top priority for US Airways. Where were US Airways on Facebook, Twitter, etc?

Even now that all of the information is coming out, a quick trip to US Airways site (usairways.com), and you’ll find that clicking on the link for “Information about flight 1549″, pops up a page with nothing in it (I’ve since retried the link and it works). The first public report of the crash was on January 15th, at 12:36 pm. US Airways’ website’s press release is from January 19th, at 12:11, almost exactly 4 days later. To their credit, a video statement was posted on the 15th, crew names released on the 16th, but the first statement from US Airways was 4 hours after the incident.

Companies are going to have to start being better prepared for emergencies such as this. With millions of camera phones and Internet access, consumers will be distributing the news at lightning speed. In order to be in control of their brand’s news, corporations will need to be able to get their news out in record time, not just on official websites and to the mainstream press, but through the social networks that the rest of us use.

Image by Janis Krums

Addendum:

The recent crash of a Turkish airliner in Amsterdam was again reported first on Twitter. @nipp first reported the crash. Unfortunately, unlike the Hudson River crash this one did not provide a link to a first hand, first-on-the-scene picture. These just goes to show that consumer generated content is quicker to the draw than big media.