American Airlines as the most mentioned airline company with 40% share of the total discussions in Q1 2020, largely led by the suit filed by the pilot’s union to immediately halt US-China flights due to Covid-19 outbreak.
There is a 45% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth in airline related conversations among the leading aviation influencers on Twitter in during the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 after several airline companies suspended their operations across to globe due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
An analysis of GlobalData’s Airlines Sector Influencer Platform, which tracks the leading aviation influencers and their discussions pertaining to the emerging trends, insights and overviews, new fields of innovation and technology, and other popular areas on Twitter, revealed that American Airlines as the most mentioned airline company with 40% share of the total discussions in Q1 2020, largely led by the suit filed by the pilot’s union to immediately halt US-China flights due to Covid-19 outbreak.
Prashant Saxena, Influencer Expert at GlobalData, says: “Airline companies around the world chose to ground flights after seeing a huge drop in bookings, contributed by travel restrictions, airspace closures and low demand of travel, bound by the government mandate to prevent the spread of outbreak.”
In terms of intensity of conversations, American Airlines is followed by British Airways with 20% share of discussions, Air India with 16% of discussions while Qatar Airways and Air Canada generated 12% each. While other companies saw a surge in discussions on Twitter after they halted their flights to China, Air India conversations were led by their evacuation efforts from virus affected countries.
Christian Seiberlich, travel and mobility expert at Tergloba, emerged as the top contributor on airlines on Twitter, followed by Issac Alexander, editor in chief at Jet City Star and Danny Lee, aviation reporter at South China Morning Post. The conversations from these contributors were largely focussed on airline companies suspending their operations as precautionary measure for passenger’s safety due to Covid-19 outbreak.
Saxena concludes: “As airlines cut capacity to the affected areas and passenger traffic falls due to Covid-19 outbreak, the industry revenues continue to contract rapidly. With the magnitude of crisis still unknown, the actual impact on airlines revenue remains to be seen.”
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
