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Guest Jon Bird is the Creative Manager for Social Media with American Airlines. We talk with Jon about how American Airlines came to establish a social presence, using it as a reputation management tool and as a “crisis management” tool, as opposed to a marketing tool. American employs an integrated model for both offense (the engagement side) and defense (customer relations issues). They use social media to talk to their customers, listen to their customers, and watch their customers talk among themselves about their American Airlines experiences. We discuss American “advocates” among their customers and how AA works to strike up relationships with them. Also, other American initiatives in the social media space for their customers.

American Airlines is active on Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. You can follow Jon on Twitter as @JonBird_video

The week’s aviation news:

• American Airlines Recalls Furloughed Pilots
• Airports wrestle with Wi-Fi issue
• End of an era as Airbus sells last two A340 jets

David’s Aircraft of the Week is the Convair R3Y Tradewind.

In this week’s Australia Desk report:

Steve talks about his RAAF C-130H ride over Sydney during the week and presents and interview with the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Tony Charles. Grant also got amongst the action at RAAF Base Richmond getting a tour of the control tower and a great view of the C-130H fleet practising for a big week of farewell flights. In other RAAF news, the Boeing Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft have achieved IOC, marking a major milestone in Australian Defence Force capability.

Find more from Grant and Steve at the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, and follow the show on Twitter at @pcdu Steve’s at @stevevisscher and Grant at @falcon124. Australia Desk archives can be found at www.australiadesk.net.

In this week’s Across the Pond segment:

On Across The Pond this week we talk to a new regional expert, this time from Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Oussama Salah has significant airline, corporate and consultancy experience and in the segment we look at the regions main airlines and airports. Like our other regional experts on ATP we will get regular updates from Oussama on key MENA aviation issues.

Find Oussama on Twitter as @obsalah, on his blog Oussama’s Take, and on Facebook.

Find Pieter on Twitter as @Nascothornet, on his blog Alpha Tango Papa, on Facebook at XTPMedia, and at the Aviation Xtended podcast.

Mount Hood after departure from Portland International by David Salisbury

Mentions:

• Weber Shandwick
• Bowling for Soup
• X-14 UltraLight: Researched & Revisted
• Hirobo One-Man Helicopter Is Battery Powered
  
• Nick Grant Adventures
• Air France 447: Final report on what brought airliner down

N867LA at Sportys by Ray

From the Mailbag:

Bob Iversen’s calculation of the amount by which the atmosphere would cool if the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme it was implemented:

According to Math! How much CO2 by weight in the atmosphere?, there is a total of ~ 3×10*12 (3 trillion) tonnes of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere. The EU ETS wanted to reduce aircraft emissions from a “baseline” of 2.19×10*8 (219 billion) tonnes of CO2 down to 2.08×10*8 tonnes by 2013 (Commission sets first emissions cap for aviation sector). Doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases the global temperature by ~ 1.2C to 3C, depending on what model is used (The Discovery of Global Warming ). That’s a “sensitivity” of ~ 4 to 10×10*-13 C/tonne (0.4 to 1.0 pico C/tonne). The EU’s desired reduction of 1.05×10*7 tonnes would result in **Gasp** 4.2 to 10.5×10*-6 C (no more than 10 millionths of a deg. C) less warming!!!

Feel free to check the math. We didn’t!

Opening and closing music courtesy Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at www.brotherloverocks.com.