Indian aviation is hotting up with three airlines planning to launch in 2014 as well as Etihad taking a stake in Jet Airways and increased competition for market share among existing players, the Indian aviation market.
Unmetric, the social intelligence monitoring company analyzed the social media presence of ten India-based airlines and foreign carriers with Indian presence. The study was conducted across four major social platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Amongst the ten airline brands studied, only Jet Airways and SpiceJet are present on all four platforms.
Facebook
All ten brands studied have a presence in Facebook.
Jet Airways is the most followed airline in Facebook with a fan base of 1,140,000, followed by SpiceJet with 530,000 fans.
Air Asia India account has the highest growth rate of 37% in the period analyzed. It has also seen high growth rates throughout the year, an indication of the anticipation in the market for this new airline.
Lufthansa India posts the most with a total of 98 updates in the period analyzed, averaging approximately to one post per day.
Air India, with an engagement score of 261 tops the list when it comes to engagement with fans. The average engagement score among all ten airlines stands at 72. Lufthansa India, despite posting the highest has an engagement score of 23.
Air India posts most frequently about its brand - of the 43 posts by the airline, 30 talked about the brand's frequent flyer programs, air fare deals, and contests.
However, it's interesting to note that the flag carrier Air India, is the least favorite airline among Indians, according to a recent survey by TripAdvisor.
Surprisingly, all airlines post more frequently about themselves and receive high engagement when they do.
When compared to the global aviation sector, Unmetric found that most Indian airlines have a much higher frequency of posting updates and have seen positive responses.
Facebook fan growth
- AirAsia India- 37.14%
- Air India- 17.28%
- Malaysia Airlines (India)- 12.28%
- GoAir- 7.73%
- Spice Jet- 6.41%
Facebook engagement
- Air India- 261
- Malaysia Airlines (India)- 96
- GoAir- 72
- Indigo- 58
- Jet Airways- 45
TwitterJust seven airlines were found to be active in Twitter. Jet Airways has the largest number of followers (44,000 followers), but KLM India ranks first in terms of growth rate at 22%.
Jet Airways replies to most tweets with a total of 884 replies (out of 2,585 mentions) in an average of 20 hours and 30 minutes per tweet.
Jet Airways tweets the least on Sundays but receives the most amount of engagement on that day.
Also, the top three hash tags used by Jet Airways and its users were: #avgeek, #aviation and #photography.
SpiceJet tweets the most on Twitter with a total of 229 tweets along with 641 replies.
Turkish Airlines India replies the fastest on Twitter with an average reply time of 21 minutes but it only replied to six tweets.
KLM Airlines recently launched a feature where it displays (in real-time) the approximate time it would take for the airline to reply to a tweet or Facebook post.
This is almost eight times better than the second best airline SpiceJet's average reply time of seven hours and 30 minutes.
The India account of KLM takes on an average 10 hours and 54 minutes to reply to a tweet. However, its global Twitter account guarantees a response time within 60 minutes.
Whilst on the subject of improving customer service on Twitter, the country's flag carrier Air India and Air France (read: An Indian's viral blog post about Air France) have not replied to any tweet during the time period analyzed by Unmetric.
Follower growth
- KLM India- 22.07%
- Airfrance- 17.46%
- SpiceJet- 11.13%
- Turkish Airlines IN- 10.88%
- GoAir- 10.03%
Number of replies
- Jet Airways- 884
- SpiceJet- 641
- KLM India- 18
- Turkish Airlines IN- 6
- Go Air- 2
Average reply time
Turkish Airlines IN- 21 minutes
- SpiceJet- 7 hours and 30 minutes
- KLM India- 10 hours and 54 minutes
- Jet Airways- 20 hours and 20 minutes
- GoAir- 26 hours and 43 minutes
YouTubeOnly Jet Airways and SpiceJet were present on YouTube with total video views of about 450,000 and 143,000 respectively. However, SpiceJet had the highest growth rate of 2.78% compared to Jet's 1.28%.
The Jet Airways Book Online TVC is the most watched video on the airline's YouTube channel with 380,000 views, contributing to 80% of the total views.
The average length of a video uploaded by Jet Airways is close to five minutes, this is more than twice the average length of a video uploaded by SpiceJet.
Pinterest
Pinterest is yet to see significant traction in India. Only Jet Airways and SpiceJet were present on Pinterest.
Jet Airways had 15 boards, 202 pins and 329 followers. SpiceJet had 5 boards, 72 pins and 77 followers.
The board that received the most number of pins was the Fan-O-Graphy board on Jet Airways’ Pinterest page. Followers were encouraged to upload pictures to the board and received 68 pins. The board that saw the highest repins to pins ratio is the JetStinations board.
Infographic about Indian carriers in social media
Study methodology
Unmetric compiled its report by sourcing data from its social media benchmark platform. All statistics were gathered from August 1 to September 30th, 2013.