Comments on: The Friday Grab Bag: Cloverfield Marketing, Hacked, and More

By: Cote'

Cote' — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:15:20 +0000

American has SMS notifications, but the problem is they don’t really use them very consistently. Sometimes, I get an SMS message way ahead of the gate agent knowing anything, other times I don’t get any txt at all when the plan has been obviously delayed 30-60 minutes.

While “fixing” this is probably “easy” from our perspective, I bet every airline has the same problem as a creeky, costly the change or add to system so they don’t do jack.

Really, though, they outta DIY it and just put up a big sticky note that says: “current status: delayed, we don’t know how long, stop asking.”

By: David Churbuck

David Churbuck — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:11:31 +0000

I’ve had my blog hijacked by the bad guys and it’s a terrible experience. And I hate patching Wordpress to plug the known holes — having a great sysadmin to bail you out is invaluable — Mark Cahill at Vario is my genius.

And your comments on inefficient information distribution by the airlines hits a major chord and reinforces that the best way to stay ontop of an airline is to do your own digging. They part with information grudgingly at best.

By: Gordon Haff

Gordon Haff — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:47:12 +0000

1. Some airlines do, in fact, let you sign up for flight status emails. I did it with Continental when I was flying down to Houston in December while a snowstorm was hitting us. They sent status updates on the hour for about 4 hours before the flight. I’m not sure how quickly updates would have been made had there, in fact, been a delay. (As it turned out things kept on schedule.)

2. I generally agree about Cloverfield but, like the Blair Witch Project at the time, I expect a lot of the effectiveness is in the novelty. If everyone did this for every movie, I’m not sure people would really have the energy to play along.