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American Airlines

Which airlines do best on Facebook and Twitter?

Harriet Baskas
Special for USA TODAY
A new study says American Airlines is the top U.S. airline on Facebook.

Airlines are right up there with hotel chains and online travel agents as some of the most active companies using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to engage with customers as they make their all-important purchasing decisions.

But which airlines do it best?

Toronto-based Engagement Labs ran some numbers, giving U.S. airlines a ranking based on engagement, impact and responsiveness, and says American Airlines is the top performer on Facebook.

"The airline not only provides company information, it also posts about worldwide news and events and relates it back to the airline industry," said company CEO Bryan Segal via e-mail. "For example, to celebrate Women's History Month, they asked followers to share stories about female American Airlines members who have shown great customer service."

American also got top marks for its use of Twitter.

"They engage their followers by using topical news and events such as #TheDress and #Selma50, thereby resulting in a natural conversation," said Segal.

The study ranked Virgin America 10th on Twitter, behind American, United, Alaska, Delta and several other airlines, "because it performed under indexed with respect to responsiveness, which is how much and how fast the company responds to actual conversations taking place on the platform," said Segal. The study also ranked JetBlue towards the bottom of the Twitter rankings "because the brand's engagement was lower than its peers," said Segal.

Meanwhile, a study of Twitter data from four large North American airlines (United, American, Delta and Air Canada) conducted by the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester found that, when it comes to addressing complaints and compliments on Twitter, airlines answered less than 40% of requests they received for engagement and were more likely to engage with customers who have a high number of followers.

The study also looked at each airline's response time and found that while American Airlines usually responds to Twitter comments within 18 minutes, the carrier took more time when replying to Twitter users with more followers compared with users who are less popular.

"The counter-intuitive finding for American Airlines hints at an underlying strategy for what the company perceived as high-risk tweets," said Abraham Seidmann, a co-author of the study and Xerox professor of computer and information systems and operations management at Simon Business School. "The airline may spend more time carefully crafting a response to a customer they view as more influential so they do not make a hasty reply that may spark a crisis," he said.

Harriet Baskas is a Seattle-based airports and aviation writer and USA TODAY Travel's "At the Airport" columnist. She occasionally contributes to Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. Follow her at twitter.com/hbaskas.

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