WHEN it comes to budget carrier, AirAsia, history shows us how its social media presence has been pivotal to its rapid expansion.
AirAsia had surely leveraged on Twitter and Facebook to the hilt, especially when it came to its core marketing strategy to echo to the entire world its “Now Everyone Can Fly” slogan.
While social media has been instrumental in enabling the low-cost airline “to build a community of people who love AirAsia and people who love to travel” (to cite its regional commercial head Kathleen Tan), the platform can be a double-edged sword to businesses which fail to deliver on their customers’ expectations.
And the budget airliner learned it the hard way when countless disgruntled passengers turned to social media to vent their frustrations on AirAsia as it has failed to resolve two key issues that have been plaguing its operations since the outset of COVID-19, which are:
- Refund for flight cancellations due to travel restrictions/border closures; and
- Rampant flight delays/disruptions.
Netizens hurled brickbats at the airline, from far and wide, in what seemingly a loyal fan base turning to become their worst detractors.
AirAsia had to quell outrage that ranges from the threat of staging a protest in front of the airline’s headquarters at Red Q in Sepang next week to the initiation of a class action lawsuit petition (which is fast gaining momentum).
Despite mounting public anger against it, AirAsia committed probably its worst public relations blunder when it took to Twitter yesterday to ask netizens: ““What advice will you give a first-time flyer?”
According to TheVibes, the question received numerous angry and tongue-in-cheek retorts, all premised on one single answer…do not fly with AirAsia!
Verbal gymnastics
At the rate of the snowballing furor, it seems that every social media posting of AirAsia – especially announcement of awards of sorts – are getting inundated with sarcasm, request for cash refunds or cheeky comments on their frequent flight delays/re-scheduling.
On the refund matter, there seems to be a trust deficit issue to be ironed out given that AirAsia’s founder and CEO of Capital A Bhd (formerly AirAsia Group Bhd) Tan Sri Tony Fernandes has recently come to the fore “to thank” flyers who decided to take a credit shell, thus enabling AirAsia to claim to have “settled 99% of its customers’ refunds”.
However, nobody knows for sure how true the claim is, given common sense would dictate that the affected passengers would surely prefer cash to credit shell, which comes with an expiry date.
On the same note, Fernandes also drew the distinction between AirAsia and its sister medium- to long-haul affiliate airlines AirAsia X (AAX) and Thai AirAsia X as separate entities.
He said AAX was in a much more difficult situation with international borders closed, hence they were completely grounded for over two years with limited cash flow coming in during that period. – June 12, 2022
