Qantas suffers at the hands of Twitter
Qantas has revealed how misleading ‘Tweets’ over the A380 engine trouble last November caused it major problems.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce urged the media to check the facts before running Twitter-created stories.
Joyce said the events of November 4 last year escalated to crisis level when Twitter reported that a Qantas A380 had crashed after one of its engines exploded over Indonesia.
“We first noticed a problem when our share price started to collapse, and that’s because of these reports coming out of Twitter,” Joyce told The World Today.
“They were reported by one mainstream media outlet on the basis of the Twitter reports that the aircraft had crashed in Indonesia and that started to obviously cause a problem with the share price,” he said.
Joyce says Qantas quickly confirmed the A380 had not crashed but was still in the air, and the airline issued a media release to correct the Twitter report.
“I think it is important that major media outlets don’t pick up on Twitter commentary and report it as fact, which is what happened in this case, and I think that was a bit disappointing,” Joyce said.
As a result of the A380 issue, Qantas is now active in social networking and teams monitor both Twitter and Facebook and respond to comments.
“In this modern day and age with social media, you have to be responsive immediately.
“You have to be out there with the facts very fast, so it’s changing the whole dynamic and speed to market that organisations like Qantas have to respond to.”
By TravelMole Australia
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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