Qantas tries to banish A380 social media wobbles with The Ashes stunt

Qantas tries to banish A380 social media wobbles with TheAshes Twitter stunt

Australian airline Qantas is attempting to put the unhappy memories of its handling of the A380 incident in Singapore behind it – by finally embracing Twitter.

The way the airline used social media (or not) before, during and after the engine failure on one of its sparkling new Airbus A380s on a flight from Singapore to Sydney was roundly criticised earlier this month.

But nearly four weeks is a long time on the internet (and in the social world, especially) and the airline has since launched an official Twitter account and a profile for its media department.

With new accounts under its belt, all the airline needed was another incident to prove its credentials.

Thankfully this has come in the form of a nice bit of PR for the airline rather than crisis management such as during the A380 incident.

For those outside of the sporting bubble currently taking place in England and Australia, The Ashes is a bi-annual cricket tournament between the old foes, taking place this time round over the course of five matches around Australia between now and the New Year.

As with any live sporting event, Twitter has become the place where much of the chatter takes place around the event.

Not so for Twitter profile @theashes. The account belongs to 22 year old Ashley Kerekes from Massachusetts (hardly a hotbed of, err, gentleman’s baseball) who found herself inundated with messages over the weekend as the first match kicked off.

She wasn’t very happy about this.

Inevitably an independent movement quickly sprung up to see if Kerekes could actually get to see at match – #gettheashestotheashes.

And now Qantas has waded in to lend a helping hand to Kerekes, after monitoring the hashtag over the weekend, offering her flights from New York to Australia so she can see a game.

Qantas has since confirmed Kerekes will be flying Down Under in the coming weeks attend a match.

Kerekes told the Brisbane Times earlier today that Twitter name is the boyfriend’s nickname for her and she only aware of how important it might become after receiving hundreds of messages to her account and almost 5,000 new followers within the space of a few days.

So, a nice PR opportunity for Qantas after seeing that social media can throw up all manner of opportunities…

And any suggestions that the entire exercise was dreamed up by Qantas and @theashes are probably wide of the mark given Kerekes has had the account since 2007 – long before Qantas started understanding how social media can be useful.