SAS Scandinavian Airlines is providing the opportunity for us all to become network planners by offering through social media channels the opportunity to select a 22nd new destination in the carrier’s summer 2012 network. The carrier recently confirmed that it will launch or resume 21 leisure routes next summer, but that it has the spare capacity for a 22nd destination which will be selected by its followers on Facebook.
The ‘Sommerflyet 2012’ campaign allows the airline’s 110,000 facebook followers to select their preferred summer destination from Oslo with the only limitation being that it must be within a five hour flight range of the Norwegian capital. The deadline for entries was October 20 and according to the website www.airlinetrends.com more than 800 entries and 180 different destination suggestions had been received just a couple of days ahead of the deadline.
“Every summer SAS reduces capacity on its domestic networks in Scandinavia. These are mainly business-driven, high-frequency routes, and as we all have four to five weeks of vacation here in Scandinavia, business traffic grinds to a halt in June and July. SAS used to park planes and send crews on vacation, but in the last couple of years costs have been cut by 23 per cent and now it’s more profitable to operate these planes, even to low-yield leisure routes,” Christian Kamhaug, Head of Social Media, SAS Scandinavian Airlines told the website.
The airline confirms that it will produce a shortlist of the top ten destinations in the next couple of weeks and its followers will be able to then vote on their favoured location.
More than 110 000 people follow Scandinavian Airlines on Facebook and we think it is great to let our most dedicated fans influence our product in this way,” added Christian Kamhaug.
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