(Fly2Miami) continued from page 13 “In just five hours,” van der Zee
said, “there were 350 applications for seats. The plane only holds 280.” The resulting flight, scheduled for March 21, is thought to be the first one ever to be scheduled by Twitter demand. Even by the standards of the fast-moving world of social media, KLM was quick to respond to tweeters. One of the reasons it could be agile, van der Zee said, is that the airline’s social-media pro- gram has earned a lot of credibility over the last year. Twitter turned out to be a primary tool in rebook- ing flights, for example, when the Icelandic volcano grounded air travel in Europe last spring. And although van der Zee had
bet that there would be enough de- mand to fill the flight, the enthusias- tic reaction both inside and outside KLM has been a “huge surprise.” The flight coalesced so quickly and unexpectedly, van der Zee said, that he’s still figuring out what it means for the future — including for flights for special-event groups. “What helped was that the dance community was very active on Twit- ter,” he said. “It wouldn’t work for every group. But when there is an event where attendees have special relationships with one another, like sporting events or conventions, this really could be a tool to basically pre-organize flights.” The nine-hour flight itself will
be something of a special event, with a radio show broadcast from the plane. And KLM is working with airports in both Miami and Amster- dam to arrange special dance- related activities. Indeed, so far, there haven’t been any downsides to the experiment. “Positive reac- tion has poured in from around the world,” van der Zee said. “We even got a tweet from Boeing saying, ‘Way to go.’” n