Update: Voting is now closed. Mohd Hisham Saleh of Malaysia Airlines is the resounding winner with 44% of the total votes received! Look out for a profile of his work with MAS very soon! Meanwhile, heartiest congratulations to him: Well done!

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It’s been a truly exciting start to the year! Our revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative received over 3000 votes last month; we launched the new SimpliFlying Podcasts; we expanded the SimpliFlying team and now we begin the second month of the year with the promise of more good things to come! On that note, let’s continue building on what we started last month.

Each month we nominate three rockstars from the aviation industry who’ve led their airlines to dazzling heights on the social web through their innovations and cutting-edge initiatives. As usual, voting will automatically close in exactly 7 days from now (Monday 11.59 pm Pacific Time). The winner gets multiple goodies: an extended profile on SimpliFlying, a Certificate of Appreciation as well as the chance to gain a wildcard entry to this year’s SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence.

Without further ado, we present this month’s nominees:
Aku Varamäki, Finnair…

The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles†campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find …

If you still need proof of whether social media matters or not, you only have to look at the turnout for this year’s votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence. By the time voting closed after 2 weeks of stiff competition, more than 30,000 votes had been submitted from over 4500 cities. And this was after having shortlisted the Top Nominees from close to 60 nominations. The finalists for each category have been announced and they’ll face off in Amsterdam on October 10.

The innovations begin

When airlines initially began their adventure on the socialscape, it was all about about feeling their way about on the social platforms of their choice. The primary focus at the outset was first, discovering how to drive traffic and building a fan-base, followed by the more important aim of utilizing the platform for customer engagement and provide them a real-time medium of information-dissemination and customer service. Slowly, however, they realized that social platforms could also aid them in driving revenue. Flash sales, deals and contests became popular to attract more customers. However, the real innovations were still some time away.

A changing landscape

That time, it seems, has …

The buzz is palpable! After a heady round of nominations (69 nominees in 10 days) we’re down to the fun bit – the real voting to shortlist the Top 3 who’ll be invited to Amsterdam on October 10th for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media. Amazingly, we received more than 5000 votes in the first 36 hours from more than 1400 cities across the world. Huge, huge numbers! And they’re growing astronomically each day!

To acquaint you better with the nominees in each category of the awards, we’ll be posting case-packs on our SlideShare channel for each of the 5 categories of awards detailing what makes each nominee so special and why they’re in the final list of nominees (the initial list had over 60 candidates!). The campaigns that clinched each airline its position of prestige will be illustrated in detail. We hope you enjoy going through them and revelling in the reflected brilliance of their innovativeness, cleverness and sheer chutzpah.

The first case-pack has 5 case-studies, each illumninating the campaigns of Top 5 nominees in the category “Best use of Social Media to drive Revenue”. As you’ll see, some, like Virgin America jumped …

After Delta Airlines pioneered the booking engine on Facebook, Malaysia Airlines has become the second major airline to introduce booking, and also allow passengers to check-in and choose to sit next to a friend, using Facebook! I had shared this example in my keynote last week in San Francisco, and after receiving multiple emails, sharing the screenshots here too.

The application, called MHBuddy, is disruptive not in the fact that it allows booking or check-in on Facebook, but because it ties in the users’ social graph at each step too. For example, during booking, a box at the bottom shows which other friends of yours will be at your destination at the time you’re there. That’s truly value adding to the customer.

Moreover, if your friends used the same application to book the same flight, you can see where they are seated and either sit next to them – or even change your flight if you’d like to avoid them! Now, there’s one good upsell opportunity for the folks at Malaysia Airlines!

While very advanced intelligent seating systems like Satisfly have been around for a couple of years, the real value of MHBuddy is that …

After 12,000 votes in just over a week were received, the top 3 most voted airlines made their presentations to the panel of judges before the winners were decided, for the inaugural SimpliFlying Awards in Social Media Excellence for airlines.

These presentations were made at the SimpliFlying-Airline Business ‘Social media for the aviation industry‘ conference held in London on Oct 1, 2010. You can view all the Live activity from the conference here.
Categories and winners

Best Social Media Campaign - Lufthansa’s “innovative” MySkyStatus
Best Use of Social Media for Crisis Management - SAS Scandinavian Airlines - for communication during the #ashcloud chaos
Best Use of Social Media to drive Revenue - Malaysia Airlines’ 72 Hours Merdeka promotion
Simplyflying Hero of the Year - Aurelie Valtat, Eurocontrol’s online communications manager for her social media management of the ashcloud chaos to the aviation industry

View more presentations from Shashank Nigam

Moments from the conference
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Congratulations once again to all the winners, and thanks to the attendees and …

I’ve spent early last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, speaking at and Chairing the Pillars of Aviation conference, featuring industry stalwarts from around the world, including airline and airport heads. The conference instilled a lot of positivity in me, about the future of the sector, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
Airports demonstrating leadership
For starters, no speakers backed out, and the conference hall was full. This may not sound significant, but it’s one of the early indicators of things getting back to normal. Among all the speeches, I was impressed by the efforts airports like Melbourne and GoldCoast are making to work in-tandem with airlines to ensure a healthy, business-driving relationship.

In fact, Malaysia Airports is doing a tremendous job creating the hub of the future, with an LCC terminal interconnected with the existing Kuala Lumpur International Airport. That means when the new LCC Terminal is ready in 2011, passengers would be able to seamlessly connect from a Cebu Pacific flight from Manila, to an AirAsia X flight to Delhi, or a Malaysia Airlines flight to London. And at a combined capacity of 53 million per year, it would be the largest airport-hub in the region.

To read more about what folks …

I have received an enthusiastic response to my article written late last week, about why the social “we”b is about the real-world relationships, just as much as it is about online interaction. In that, I recollected how the best side-effect of Twitter has been the number of highly talented individuals I’ve been able to meet around the world.

I’ve got a bunch of emails, tweets and comments over the last couple of days asking me how this observation applies to airlines. Firstly, let me address why airlines need to have real-world interaction with their online “fans”.

Why is real-world interaction needed to complement social media engagement?
Online interaction is good, because it allows the airline to connect with a lot of people across geographies, and allows those people to connect among themselves too.

Where online engagement falls short is often the creation of a long-lasting emotional bond, which comes only through real-life meetings. Imagine a Facebook fan of an airline, who has never flown them before, but has always taken part in online contests or discussions. Wouldn’t the relationship be cemented only if he flies that …

Over the past couple of months, I’ve spent a lot of time in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and that resulted in an overdose of branding messages from regional airlines like Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia and Tiger Airways.

I was intrigued in particular by Malaysia Airlines’ “Malaysian Hospitality” campaign – which is a play on the MH code of the airline. Soon enough, I got to experience the “world’s best in-flight service” myself, on Business Class from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles (see photos at the bottom of this article). And here’s what I feel is the essence of Malaysian Hospitality – it’s the “human-ness” of flying. Let me explain what I mean.
Malaysian Hospitality – a story of genuine care
It may sound strange, but a lot of airlines that have good service often lack “humanity” in their service. Sometimes, it even becomes robotic – I’m sure you’ve seen robotic smiles plastered on flight attendants. Malaysia Airlines’ service, in contrast, was genuine and very human – one that makes you feel good as a person. Let me share a story.

I opted to have my meal soon after take-off, while the gentleman next to me chose to have it later. I first …

Starting the first week of July, Malaysia Airlines’ subsidiary FireFly will be starting routes from Malaysia to Singapore. Of course, to get to heart of the matter, I met up with their Head of Marketing, Angelina Fernandez, who sheds light into the makings of this new airline and what makes it special. They call themselves the community airline, and offer free snacks (cookies!!) on-board even flights that last as little as 20 mins (Singapore – Melaka).
What makes FireFly special?
FireFly is being positioned as a community airline, “connecting the ethnically-similar communities spread across South East Asia”, as Angelina explains. Targeted at the business traveler – due to quick turnarounds (they fly ATRs), and proximity to the city center in Kuala Lumpur, as they operate out of Subang Airport. The airline also intends to build on Malaysia Airlines’ schedule through flight timings that are complementary.

For the un-initiated, till recently, Singapore-Kuala Lumpur was one of the most heavily protected air routes in the world. Since liberalization, connectivity has increased multi-fold, with airlines like low-cost AirAsia, Tiger Airways, JetStar Asia and now FireFly sometimes offering prices even lower than the bus fares. Enjoy Angelina’s interview (just 3 mins) and then read on for …