As I write this, I’m sitting at Oakland International airport preparing to board a Southwest Airlines flight and what pops up on my Facebook Feed? A notification from the very same carrier informing its nearly 4 million followers (and me) that one of its aircraft, SWA flight 345,  has experienced a collapse of its nose gear at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

So for the first time ever in my experience, I hear about an airline incident directly from the airline first. Impressive.

It’s hard to believe that just a couple weeks ago I wrote about the social media winners and losers with the awful crash of Asiana 215 at SFO. Not a big surprise that Southwest was listed among the winners with timely and useful information via Twitter on its operations in the wake of the closure of SFO. Clearly a social media win.

Customers expect to hear your story directly from you – especially when that story is difficult. And they expect to be able to talk to you too. Does not matter if you’re a major airline or a local small business or organization. I always admire customer connections done right – especially in the face of a crisis.

Of course, there is the other extreme like loco Chipotle Tweets , but that just keeps things interesting! 🙂