Just a random thought that I had.

After seeing so many 'What's next for (Insert airport, airline, airframe, specific program)' in which we are essentially opening it up for discussion between thousands of different minds and opinions, often those that are the "boots on the ground" in the industry and seeing everything firsthand.

I'm not associated with the airline industry, just a plane geek, but the more I think about it, it would be a really effective way to open up new ideas to bring to a boardroom/investor meeting. Maybe that is already going on and my search skills are just subpar.

Thoughts?

Very unlikely as a majority of the discussions here are a bit far fetched from how airlines operate. I know this as i read the anet forums for years, then I joined an airline.

Most of them likely have access to market data and research that can help them make much more informed decisions than all the armchair CEOs in these forums.

Only if they have a lot of time on their hands.

No

BWIAirport wrote:

Most of them likely have access to market data and research that can help them make much more informed decisions than all the armchair CEOs in these forums.

Figured as much. I know a lot of what is said on here could be pretty far fetched.

Just more of the "throw things at the wall and eventually something will stick" was my mindset when I pondered the question.

Appreciate the insight!

No doubt there are some airline management people read these boards and make their posts but your not going to get Willie Walsh sending you an email saying, "that's a great idea, mind if I nick it?"

readytotaxi wrote:

No doubt there are some airline management people read these boards and make their posts but your not going to get Willie Walsh sending you an email saying, "that's a great idea, mind if I nick it?"

For sure.

I remember some time ago there was a CEO (I forget the company) that took to reddit to ask for honest opinions on certain operations. I know that authors do it for Q & A (Robert Greene, Tim Ferris, etc)

Imagine Ed Bastian dropped in asking people about their thoughts on whats next for DTW

I work in a market research function, but in a completely different industry. We might peruse Reddit or consumer forums out of curiosity to see what's "buzzing," but that's about the extent of it. There are a whole lot more sophisticated platforms and data sets that companies can use to make informed decisions, as indicated above. Furthermore, a site like a.net wouldn't exactly be a representative group of the broader flying population, so you certainly wouldn't want to make decisions based upon the thoughts of an extremely narrow consumer segment.

If they do, they should probably be fired.

Airliners.net is not a tool of any kind for airline company management, only for your education and entertainment. Aircraft/airport photos are #1 priority here.

Hey Delta....in December 2019 when DL turns 40 @ SRQ...can you send us a 767?

Thanx

At one point, I'm pretty sure that some people from Alaska Airlines were watching some threads. I think they all went away when us PDX-ers were complaining about them neglecting PDX ever since the VX merger.

727LOVER wrote:

Hey Delta....in December 2019 when DL turns 40 @ SRQ...can you send us a 767?

Thanx

Heh, maybe a less than daily 767 cold pick up the Florida seasonal traffic to/from MSP and/or DTW.

GoneSovereign wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

No doubt there are some airline management people read these boards and make their posts but your not going to get Willie Walsh sending you an email saying, "that's a great idea, mind if I nick it?"

For sure.

I remember some time ago there was a CEO (I forget the company) that took to reddit to ask for honest opinions on certain operations. I know that authors do it for Q & A (Robert Greene, Tim Ferris, etc)

Imagine Ed Bastian dropped in asking people about their thoughts on whats next for DTW

I think a certain someone (klm617) would have quite a lot to say to Ed...

I can't imagine this forum is useful to them in any way,

Don't know about management but these days every company has a social media department and part of their job is exactly to participate in sites like this to find out what people are saying about their company and to also promote the company. I've seen it happen at my own firm.

The biggest issue is a.net is not a representation of the populace. So while we have opinions, we are a very self-selected focus group and as a result could grossly skew any form of data collection if this was used as a sample set.

I also post on Flyertalk and similarly, everyone is * Gold or Oneworld Emerald and flies F or J. Clearly we aren't an average group of fliers.

Most like they monitor a.net forum, however, if they pay some attention or take what we write here serioulsy at all is another subject.

It won't be the managers themselves reading these forums, they've got that outsourced to their social media departments and such. Only when something useful comes along it's being filtered out and passed on to the management, but the majority of what's written here is useless crap that the managers don't ever get to see. It's the job of the social media departments to go through all that crap and select the few things useful out of it.

Yes. For a good laugh

Yeah, I'm sure the people in charge of multi-billion dollar companies are just dying for input from the 12 year olds on airliners.net.

Cory6188 wrote:

Furthermore, a site like a.net wouldn't exactly be a representative group of the broader flying population, so you certainly wouldn't want to make decisions based upon the thoughts of an extremely narrow consumer segment.

You would end up with 3x daily A340 service between Boise and Dubuque - widebodies all around!

Everyone here is missing the obvious. The OP is obviously in upper management of some company and is gauging reactions to see if doing market research on forums is a good idea.

To the OP: That would be an overwhelmingly bad idea. Never source data from echo chambers.

My answer is it depends. Should it be the sole source of feedback for an airline exec? Of course not. But OTOH, many on here seem to put a lot of undue and overweighted faith in market research, which has been behind such great successes as New Coke, the Zune, and the Galaxy Note 7. A blend of research and grassroots feedback would be most prudent.

I think there is a better chance of us all learning how to levitate then there is of a airline finding anything useful in the forums other then issues around customer service.

I used to work in route planning for one of the big 3 US legacies, and I regularly checked this forum (as I had done before working for an airline). But as others have said, it was purely for entertainment value and nothing more. Airlines have access to their own confidential data, and they also subscribe to industry data sources such as OAG and Diio Mi. I can't imagine a scenario where someone on this forum would somehow have access to insight that is not available to an airline.

My thoughts are this: the airline professionals that I know universally consider this website to be a joke. Airliners.net takes itself entirely too seriously. So, no, I absolutely don’t believe anyone is coming here for serious ideas.

That having been said, I think you’d be surprised by the kind of people that do actually browse the forums. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone’s CEO perused the forums from time to time, if only for a laugh.

I have seen people in airline management watching and reading this forum. I have also seen an email forwarded to a link to one of these threads with information that an airline VP found interesting. There is a lot of speculation here, but between the A vs B battles a lot of inside information does get shared here. Many managers and executives at airlines are also aviation geeks

GoneSovereign wrote:

Just a random thought that I had.

After seeing so many 'What's next for (Insert airport, airline, airframe, specific program)' in which we are essentially opening it up for discussion between thousands of different minds and opinions, often those that are the "boots on the ground" in the industry and seeing everything firsthand.

I'm not associated with the airline industry, just a plane geek, but the more I think about it, it would be a really effective way to open up new ideas to bring to a boardroom/investor meeting. Maybe that is already going on and my search skills are just subpar.

Thoughts?

Doubtful. Most suggestions usually involve more perks and keep prices low. More legroom, rock bottom fares. I once made a suggestion to United through their Facebook page that I thought would be good. That idea was to offer a tab on the webpage, that would appear if a person just bought international travel that would take the person to the portion of their website that lists requirements for international travel. I was inspired to make that suggestion when I flew top Australia, (Great trip, by the way) taking a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles. There was a couple on the plane as well who were also going to Australia, who were citizens of Canada. They thought there passports would be all the documentation they needed; Australia also requires a visa. They made it but barely as they got on their notepads and applied for the visa. Anyway, I digress. To my knowledge, the website was never upgraded to include that feature.

2travel2know2 wrote:

Most like they monitor a.net forum, however, if they pay some attention or take what we write here serioulsy at all is another subject.

They monitor a.net and similar sites, although no contributions, unless they want to place rumours.

A few ex-posters, deemed to have exceeded the mark, who no longer contribute.

Not here, but Andrew Yiu (Vice president, Product) and Ben Smith (President of Passenger Airlines) of Air Canada used to post at FT's Air Canada forum. They stopped because of personal attacks by forum members.

I worked for a large airline group that is based in EU, in Sales and Marketing. We received a daily newsletter on email to keep us informed with the worldly affairs of the industry, but often I fwd'd threads of news that was posted here first before any internal sources shared the news to management. I find some good info from time to time on here, though decisions are never made based on this information.

Ideas ? I gues not.

I named a stretch A320NEO "Plus" in 2012. When did Airbus name it "Plus"?

Honestly I don't know, does anybody?

http://www.cardatabase.net/modifiedairlinerphotos/search/photo_search.php?id=00015369

We know that some companies in other industries do pay trolls to respond to negative posts on social media about their company, so the troll poses as some random person and trolls the complainant enough that the complainant goes away, and thus, so does the PR problem for the company.

As for real airline management getting ideas from here, I doubt it. You wouldn't want to - it isn't a proper overview of what general customers want.