Friday, November 27th, 2009 13:44:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Firefly Sdn Bhd is targeting to achieve one million passengers by the end of this year. As of Sept 2009, the carrier has managed to achieve 670,192 passengers.

Firefly’s head of marketing and communications, Angelina C. Fernandez, in an exclusive interview with Mail Money said that for this year, they saw a 170 per cent increase in terms of passengers compared to last year.

Angelina also pointed out that the increase in passengers may also be due to its increased number of flights to Singapore.

The airline, which is also known as the “community airline”, had in July launched its first flight to Singapore from the Skypark Subang terminal and now is servicing the route four times daily.

In September, Firefly took a step further when it decided to extend their connectivity to Singapore via Ipoh, Kuantan and Kuala Terengganu.

“Changi Airport is the target market as it is a major transit point for various airlines, and our target is not only the locals but also tourists who use the airport to fly to other destinations,” she said.

She added that apart from Subang, the three other States have good tourist attraction spots and Firefly has made travelling easier to these places.

Firefly provides routes to various points within Peninsular Malaysia, Southern Thailand and Sumatra in Indonesia, aligning itself with the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMTGT) agenda.
Angelina said currently 50 per cent of Firefly passengers are business and corporate travellers who travel on a shuttle basis. However, of late there has been a rise in passengers travelling on leisure.

“Ever since the increase in the leisure market, besides booking online using credit cards, we are also looking
at alternatives and varieties in mode of payment and booking via mobile, banking-in and also postal to make things easier for those who live in rural areas,” she said.

For such added mode of payments, Angelina said that Firefly is in talks with various telecommunication
companies and banks to start the system next year.

When asked on plans for the airlines next year, Angelina said Firefly has expansion plans which will be carried out in stages.

She said the Phase One plan commenced in August this year and is expected to be completed next month.

She added that the fleet expansion to Singapore was under the Phase One plan.

Phase Two will commence in January next year and will end in the second quarter.The airline is operating with seven aircrafts and will be adding three more by next year which is part of the Phase Two plan.

Next year Angelina said the company is planning to strengthen their value-added services for customer satisfaction.

“We have launched new routes this year and next year we are aiming to improve services. We want to strengthen and try to cover all loopholes,” she said.

When asked about the criteria to expand their flights, Angelina said they were looking at demand and also places which are a bit different from the normal routes other airlines are concentrating on.

She added that Firefly has the advantage as its 72-seater airplanes can land in airports with shorter runways.

The carrier operates under the two-year old FlyFirefly Sdn Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysian Airline System Berhad.

Thanks to technology, the world as we know is getting much smaller at a much quicker pace.

Imagine this fictional scenario. Annie is stuck at the airport waiting for her turn to check-in on her next flight. She got treated poorly by the check-in service agent as she arrived a bit late for her flight. Annie was not happy. She took out her Blackberry and went on Twitter. She tweets about her bad experience with 500 tweeple in her list, and those tweeple retweet to their tweeple, and pretty soon thousands of people know about the bad experience and by then many have built a negative perception about the airline! All in a matter of mere minutes! The world is indeed getting smaller.

As quickly as the internet once changed the business and marketing world, the emergence of social media is transforming the internet marketing world to a totally different level. Gone are those days where the Public Relation/Marketing Department of a company can sit back, relax and engage in traditional one-way marketing. Advertising/marketing was so much easier 10-15 years ago when all companies have to do is advertise during news or prime-time shows such as MacGyver or Majalah 3 and the message will be spread to the whole country.

Then along came social media. With social media, everyone can say anything to anyone, anytime. Social media has been proven to be the most effective way to generate publicity and awareness for a company or organization’s products or services through all forms of social media on the Internet, including online communities, social networking sites, web forums, discussion groups, and blogs.

Throughout the world, almost all major brands from industries across the board have begun engaging social media as the main marketing platform for their products and services. Similarly, the aviation industry has seen picking up the trend and utilizing social media as a mainstream platform. In Asia, credits have to be given to airlines in Malaysia for picking up the trend at the early stage while some airlines in this region are still ‘thinking’ about having a twitter account.

One of the active airlines in the social media world is of course, my favorite airlines, Firefly!

In this episode of my Firefly Review series, join me in looking at Firefly’s social media tools which are their official blog, twitter and Facebook.

****
Firefly’s Official Blog – http://blog.fireflyz.com.my/
****

This is the place where you can get the latest scoops and stories on Firefly Airlines. The flexibility of blog platform allows Firefly to publish various blog posts including news on Firefly, events, information, promotion updates, experience with Firefly and travel experience at Firefly destinations.

With regular updates, Firefly is utilizing the blog to build greater confidence amongst consumers towards the Firefly brand. Like it or not, Firefly is a small and young airline compared to other players in the local industry hence having a corporate website alone is not enough to create public awareness on the airline. Many have turned to blogs and other passenger’s reviews to find out about the airline, its planes, operations, destinations, prices and safety record. Having a semi-formal blog that also picks up blog posts and articles from all over the net written by other bloggers (AzuanZahdi.com being one of it) will help to create a database of information that are accessible to new and returning flyers of Firefly.

I have been following Firefly’s blog from day one and I have seen many improvements over the last few months. I believe traffic to the blog have also increased and there was even contests and prizes given away via the airline’s blog. Moving forward, hopefully there will be more interesting posts captured both from blogosphere and internally from Firefly. I am planning more interesting posts/stories in the future and I look forward to be sharing it on Firefly’s Blog.

****
Firefly’s Official Twitter -http://twitter.com/FlyFirefly
****

Twitter is a widely-used free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Twitter is everywhere. Celebrities, politicians, businesses, you and me. Almost everyone that has access to the Internet has a twitter account, following someone and being followed by someone. This phenomenon has created an almost real-time world that co-exists in cyber and real world. With Twitter, latest updates are literally at everyone’s fingertips.

Firefly has its own official twitter. Currently Firefly’s tweets are mainly on updates from their blog and website focusing on latest promos and happenings. These short tweets are useful and effective for people on the move and it’s also more personal as it provides a 2-way communication channel between the Firefly and the customers.

Sharing of experience is also faster as passengers can send a tweet and photo of their Firefly experience @FlyFirefly right after their flight and Firefly would be able to retweet it to hundred others followers.

Moving forward, hopefully Firefly twitter can also be used to provide real-time updates on flight information (delays, cancellation, early arrival) as well as weather and traffic to airport updates so passengers of Firefly can plan their travel even better.

****
Firefly’s Official Facebook Page – http://facebook.com/firefly
****

This is the strength of Firefly’s Social Media marketing campaign. To date, 10,280 strong fans have joined this Facebook fan page and these fans have created an active online community. Latest news on the airline and the industry, new promos and updates are also shared through this Facebook page but one useful feature that has been the strength of this Firefly Facebook page is the availability of immediate 2-way customer response.

Each day, questions and comments on the Facebook wall from existing and potential customers of Firefly are being answered by Firefly’s representatives. Responds were usually given within hours as most of the questions are really ‘frequently asked questions’ but sometime it may take a while as explanations need to be derived from various departments within Firefly.

Managing more than 10,000 fans is not an easy task especially when things can get repetitive with fans kept asking the same question (Example: How can I get cheap ticket for Singapore-Ipoh on CNY2010?) over and over again. However the Firefly team has professionally entertain these questions/requests at the same time maintaining their fun and charming attitude online.

As the bridge between online and real world is becoming smaller, it is hope that Firefly Airlines will continue engaging the social media as one of their mainstream channel. If you are not following Firefly’s Facebook, twitter and blog, do get out from your cave and join in the fun for a chance to win free flight tickets and cool mystery gifts and the chance to socialize with Firefly-ers from all over the world

See you all online!

Our next experience came from Prakash of Johor Bahru. He tells us his first experience with Firefly. Bad or good comments? Well, you will have to read it!

My colleagues have been flying Firefly almost exclusively for the past 2 years. So often I have heard of passengers complaining about the flight delays, but I consider myself lucky because I didn’t experience any delay on any of my flights I previously travelled. That luck evaded me during my most recent date with the airline’s flight FY 2148 from JB to Subang and to tell you frankly, that was the 1st time i took the Firefly aircraft.

Many have told me about the decline in Firefly service. They said they are not like they used to be at the first time when they launched their service mid 2007. I hate to believe that they are correct. I sincerely hope they are wrong.

The 1st hurdle came by as I received 6 text messages informing me that my flight have been delayed by 2 hours. Well, i felt that it was ‘okay’ for me as this was my 1st experience of getting flight delays and I eventually arrived at Sultan Ismail International airport for my check in at the re-timed session.

As everything went on smooth, there was another setback as the flight have been delayed by another 30 minutes which by this time all the passengers who were all waiting to board the aircraft at the boarding bay stranded without any prior notice or announcement over the Airport PA system that announced about the delay.

Well, what I could witness was, there were many passengers who were unhappy and many of them approached the information counter for further explanations and what they get was a no vail answer. While I was walking around the boarding bay, there was a guy by the name of Raymond who approached me and we started to chat about the flight delay and eventually ended up being a new friend on board.

Through his conversation at that time, he told me this was the second time in a row that he faced this flight delay without prior notice and he was getting fed up with such services. His 1st flight was bound to Kuala Terengganu via Subang.

As the conversation was getting lengthy, we talked about many topics which I believe could be an improvement for Firefly.

1. Firefly should take advantage of the access to Subang International Airport which would be an easier an convenient route to many of the passengers staying in Selangor and KL district as I believe all the other aircrafts are flying to KLIA or LCCT which is quite far from the main sub-urban areas. (Except Berjaya Air i guess). So I believe the flight delays, cancellations and poor service is not recommendable.

2. If there is any flight delays exceeding 2 or 3 hours, passengers would be entitled to cash vouchers which they can use to purchase the next Firefly ticket. In this way, I believe the passengers would be given another chance to judge the credibility and improvements that out to be virtues by Firefly. (Passengers don’t lose hope on the Firefly services)

3. Announcement over the Airport PA system if there are any flight delays and appointing a crew or representatives over at the boarding bay. (This to improve the communication service.)

Budget airlines may be good in terms of value for the tourists but for business people it is different. If a company is a prestigious one and is prospering why should it make its productive and hardworking executives travel cattle class or budget airlines? If I am working as an executive for a big and renowned company and it makes me fly budget or economy, I will switch allegiance. My reason for switching to another establishment is why work for a stingy company?

So you see people will still fly business and first class especially now when the recession is almost over and companies are reporting brisk businesses and turning in profits.
In this light,airlines like Firefly need to improve their services and compete with the best as i believe many of the Firefly staffs have the experience working with a world class airlines such as MAS. So, I hope that it would bring up some bright ideas to establish Firefly as the best community airline as mentioned!

Last but not least, I would like to say some great moments travelling up the new ATR72-500 and their cabin crew services. This is really great experience as the plane look awesome and great.

I believe firefly can make wonders with this aircraft as this is an unique model here as many of the other airlines are using Airbus and Boeing up their sleeves. So, let Firefly go in with a bang to get the large community to fly frequently with them. Well, the cabin crew services was a great one and didn’t had any hiccups along the way as their broad smiles and delicate service was a natural cool down for many of the passengers.

Well, this was what I could think about at this moment and if there is any improvements or comments, would post it up soon.

Regards,
Your concerned community
Prakash