This was published 8 years ago
What air passengers tweet about the most, Twitter study reveals
Delayed, late, cancelled or lost: what's the most common word tweeted to airlines?Credit: Glenn Hunt
An analysis of more than 1.3 million Twitter messages sent to airlines over the last holiday season found the phrase "thank you" was more common than any other.
But that doesn't mean the most Twitter messages sent to the world's airlines are filled with gratitude.
Consider a tweet sent to Spirit Airlines by a traveller from Atlanta: "Thanks for keeping us waiting for 8 hrs only to cancel! You ruined our 1st wedding Anniversary trip, without even a apology."
In the last few years, social media sites have become one of the easiest and fastest way for air travellers to communicate with airlines. As a result, the nation's biggest carriers have hired social media teams to monitor Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other sites to respond to comments and gripes and protect their airlines' good name.
Ultra-low-cost carrier Spirit Airways relies on a robot - not humans - to respond to Twitter messages that mention the carrier.
In what may be the first analysis of Twitter messages sent to airlines, the study by US-based Stratos Jet Charters does not reach a conclusion about the overall sentiment of the tweets. But you can get a sense that many Twitter users are not happy, based on the other popular terms used when tweeting about airlines.
The term "thank you" got 101,798 mentions in the analysis, while "delayed, late and cancelled" got 66,831 mentions, followed by "lost," as in lost luggage, with 16,272 mentions, according to the analysis of tweets sent from November 20 to January 9.
Profanity erupted 14,490 times in the tweets, the report said.
"Generally speaking, we were surprised to find that people didn't feel the need to censor themselves when tweeting at airlines," said Signe Nicklas, a spokesman for Stratos.
Mexico's low-cost carrier Volaris had the fastest average response time to customers' tweets: four minutes and 12 seconds. Empathetic terms such as "we're sorry" and "our apologies" were found most often - 41 per cent of the time - in responses sent by Australia's low-cost airline, Jetstar Airways.
The Los Angeles Times
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