AirSafe.com invites you to add to the Facebook page, submit articles, and contribute to the podcast

If you have been a regular reader of the AirSafeNews.com, have made a habit of visiting AirSafe.com, or have checked out some of the audio and video podcasts, then you definitely have an interest in what we try to do with the various AirSafe.com related online resouces. We'd like to ask you to take the next step and add to what we have.

Over the years, the most popular source of outside material has been the AirSafe.com Complaint System, with many of those complaints forming the foundation of the new FlightsGoneBad.com site. Several recent changes make it easier than ever to contribute in other ways. Whether it is writing, photography, personal stories, or community building, we have several new options.

Expanding the Facebook Profile
At AirSafe.com's updated Facebook page, you can now add post messages, videos, photos, or links on that page. If you are not already registered with Facebook, you must do so to add content.

Add to AirSafe.com's Newes Social Network
While Facebook is a household name, there are other social networking resources out there, some of which make it very easy to create a community resource. We are asking you to check out AirSafe.com's site at Airline Safety and Plane Crashes - The Social Network of AirSafe.com. Created using the services of Ning, this site allows anyone to contribute photos, videos, blog posts, and even upcoming events. Like Facebook, you have to register before adding content, but registration is free.

Add to the Podcast
If you have a question or comment for the podcast The Conversation at AirSafe.com, you can now easily send it to us by phone. Simply call AirSafe.com at 408.905.6295 and record your thoughts in the voice mail system. You can also send an audio file to AirSafe.com (MP3 only) and we will consider including it in a future podcast. Although we are looking for short recordings of one minute or less, feel free to forward longer pieces for consideration.

Submit an Article
Feel free to submit an original article for publication on this site, or on one of the other AirSafe.com sites. You can write about anything that seems relevant for AirSafe.com's audience. For guidance on the length of the article, please read this article on the "Gettysburg Criterion." Origianlly created for email, it also works for blog posts.

We would really like to see articles that include photos, videos (especially on YouTube), or other information to go along with your written submission.

Recommend an Online Resource
If you know of a blog, web site, podcast, YouTube video, or any other online resource that would be of interest to the AirSafe.com audience, please send it to us.

The Evolution of Social Media's Role at AirSafe.com

An earlier AirSafeNews.com article featured an audio podcast that discussed the role social media played in how the public found out about the January 2009 ditching of a US Airways A320 on the Hudson River. This article features a video based on a presentation that AirSafe.com's Dr. Todd Curtis gave at the 2009 Bird Strike North America conference. This show provides a general definition of social media and then provides specific examples of how it was used by AirSafe.com to expand the site's audience and to enhance the usefulness of its information.

Video and Audio Podcast Links (7:01)
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | YouTube

Related AirSafeNews.com Articles
How AirSafe.com Uses Social Media
Social Media Insights from AirSafe.com
Social Media's Role in Airline Safety

Additional Social Media Resources
AirSafe.com Creates Online Radio Station
Social Media's Role in Airline Safety
How AirSafe.com Uses Twitter with a Mailing List
Ten Free Social Media Things You Can Do
AirSafe Media's Social Media Blog.

AirSafe.com Survey Results Plus American Airlines 777 Turbulence Event near Tokyo

Survey Results for The Text to Speech Narrator
Since last week's debut of the Macbook's text to speech function as a podcast narrator, many of you responded to the survey about this narrator and have given AirSafe.com some valuable feedback. There were 78 responses, 63 of whome listened to the entire podcast. Of these 63, 10 said would not listen to this narrator again and 12 others were not sure if they would do so again. Most of those who would listen to this narrator again agreed that it would be appropriate for shorter podcasts.

Based on these results, this narrator will likely be used again, mostly for shorter episodes, or to supplement other audio content.

AirSafe.com Visitor Survey
In an earlier survey about what resources visitors use at AirSafe.com, most of the 35 who responded said that they visited multiple AirSafe.com related sites or services, with AirSafeNews.com, Plane-Crash-Videos.net, and the AirSafe.com podcast being the most popular choices.

Roughly half of the respondents have not listened to or viewed one of the podcasts. If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to check out one of the podcast videos that are hosted on YouTube. You can find all of audio and video podcasts are at podcast.airsafe.org

Only a few of the 35 admitted to using any social media resources. Also, when asked what they wanted changed AirSafe.com, the most popular response was adding more photos. A BirdStrikeNews.com article from last month addresses both points to some extent. In Ten Free Social Media Things You Can Do, AirSafe.com provided suggestions for free and easy to use social media tools you can use, as well as an example of tools that are actively used at AirSafe.com. Based on your feedback, some of them will be used on a more regular basis throughout AirSafe.com's network of sites.

By the way, some social media resources are in the right hand column. You can join the email notification list so you can get an email whenever this site is updated. You can also click on the Twitter logo and subscribe to AirSafe.com's Twitter account. If you don't have a Twitter account, you can easily sign up. Also, if you use Google Reader or another kind of RSS reader, you can click on the appropriate link or icon and subscribe that way as well. If you have no idea what RSS is all about, that will be covered in a future article.

American Airline Turbulence Event near Tokyo
Earlier this week, AirSafe.com came across several small article news articles about a turbulence event involving an American Airlines 777 (N777AN), Flight 61, near Tokyo on Monday (26 October 2009). Reportedly, nine passengers were injured and five, including three children, were treated at a local hospital after the aircraft landed. The plane encountered turbulence over the Pacific Ocean, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of Tokyo's Narita airport. The aircraft landed without further incident about 14 minutes later.

Passengers reported that the airplane had already experienced strong turbulence for about 20 minutes. Also, the 'fasten seatbelt' signs had been on for about 45 minutes before the event. There were 228 passengers and crew members aboard the Boeing 777.

Since this was an event that happened in Japan, and because it did not cause substantial aircraft damage or fatal injuries, it is unlikely that information from this incident will be in the accident and incident databases of the FAA or the NTSB. If you find any additional sources of news about this incident, please leave a comment and a link to that information.

Related Resources
Turbulence Risks
Selected Fatal Turbulence Events
Air Canada Turbulence Event from 2009
Child Restraint Advice from the FAA
TurbulenceForecast.com

Report About Air Canada Turbulence Event from January 2008

Want to Improve AirSafe.com? - Fill Out This Month's Survey and Tell Us How

Welcome to AirSafe.com's October 2009 survey. We've made several changes over the last few months, and we want to get your feedback about your experience with AirSafe.com and the podcasts, blogs, web sites, or other resources associated with AirSafe.com.

Please answer one or more questions. We'll provide a summary of the results next month.

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How AirSafe.com Uses Social Media to Better Serve Its Audience and Why You or Your Organization Should Too

The January 2009 ditching on the Hudson River showed how important social media was as a source of news and information, and it also showed how freely available social media resources can sometimes allow an individual to be as influential as the largest news media organization. This show provides a general definition of social media and then provides specific examples of how it was used by AirSafe.com to expand the site's audience and to enhance the usefulness of the site's information.

This episode of the Conversation at AirSafe.com is based on a presentation Dr. Todd Curtis gave at the 2009 Bird Strike North America Conference in Victoria, Canada. The original audience was full of aviation safety professionals and wildlife biologists, but the subject of the presentation was relevant to any organization trying to figure out how to use social media more effectively.

Listen to the Podcast
The Evolution of Social Media's Role at AirSafe.com (7:02)

The role of social media in aviation safety community was previously covered in this site, as well as at the AirSafe.com site BirdStrikeNews.com

Previous AirSafeNews.com Articles
How to Include Free AirSafe.com Content in Your Site
AirSafe.com Creates Online Radio Station

Previous BirdStrikeNews.com Articles
Social Media's Role in Airline Safety
How AirSafe.com Uses Twitter with a Mailing List
Ten Free Social Media Things You Can Do

Another site with related information is AirSafe-Media.com.

Social Media Insights from AirSafe.com

If you have used social media applications like Skype, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or are curious about how you can use social media, you may want to check out two recent posts on AirSafe.com's Bird Strike News site at http://www.birdstrikenews.com.

The first describes how AirSafe.com combines a blog with both a mailing list and Twitter to talk to three very different parts of the AirSafe.com audience at the same time.

The second talks about ten different free social media related applications you can try, from Blogger to Twitter to Google Alerts. For each type of application, AirSafe.com suggests one for you to try.

That post also has links to several examples of social media applications currently used by AirSafe.com.

Next week, Dr. Curtis of AirSafe.com will be in Victoria, Canada, where he will present the paper "Social Media, Bird Strikes, and Aviation Safety Policy" at the 2009 Bird Strike North America Conference. Attendees at the upcoming conference will have the opportunity to not only attend the presentation, but also to have Dr. Curtis evaluate their organization's approach to using social media.

Social Media's Role in Airline Safety

Listen to the audio podcast of this article

The January 2009 ditching of the US Airways flight in the Hudson River was a rare combination of a spectacular plane crash that generated massive worldwide attention without killing anyone.

The plane went down as a result of a midair collision with a flock of geese shortly after takeoff from New York's La Guardia Airport. For aviation safety organizations involved with dealing with the threat of bird strikes, among them Bird Strike Committee USA, the US Airways ditching in New York was an important event because the accident will very likely lead to industry wide changes in regulations and procedures associated with bird and wildlife hazards.

This event also served as an excellent example of how popular social media applications like Twitter and YouTube affect how the public finds out about plane crashes. It also shows that any organization that wants to play a significant role in any public debate about bird strike hazards should aggressively use these and other social media tools to help educate and inform the public.

While the accident took place on the doorstep of the most important media center in the United States, many of the early images from the crash came not from the media, but from witnesses. One of the most well known photos was from a cell phone camera of Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferry boats that helped to rescue passengers and crew. The picture was uploaded from the passenger's iPhone to TwitPic, a service that allows Twitter users to upload photos (see photo on TwitPic).

Twitter wasn't the only social media application working overtime that day. Video sharing sites like YouTube were flooded with user-generated content that collectively had hundreds of thousands of views within a day.

If social media applications like Twitter didn't exist, a plane crash in New York City would still get massive amounts of attention from the major media. However, the "Miracle on the Hudson" accident also showed how an average eyewitness of a dramatic news event like a plane crash can easily distribute images and other newsworthy information that could reach tens of thousands in a matter of minutes.

Until recently, one of the few options for online publishing was through a web site. Ten years ago, AirSafe.com helped launch the Bird Strike Committee USA web site, Birdstrike.org. One of the stated purposes was to have the site act as a resource for the media and the general public, especially if there were an event like as a bird strike-related crash.

Even in the days before Google, search engines were the most important way that users could locate information online. Because the birdstrike.org web site had been active for many years, and because it included a wide range of bird strike related information, the site was often among the top results for many bird and wildlife strike related searches. Because of this, major media organizations were able to find basic information about bird strikes and to contact many of the key Bird Strike Committee USA members, and as a result many of these members were able to provide insights and information to a broad audience in the hours after the crash.

It used to be that you only needed a solid web site, or perhaps a blog to keep an online audience informed. This approach is no longer good enough. You need more than web sites and blogs to keep in touch with an audience, because that audience is using emerging social media tools to develop different kinds of ongoing relationships with other users, and to find news and other information.

For an example of the differences between the Internet of today, and the Internet of a few years ago, one just needs to look at the online realities of two New York area plane crashes, TWA Flight 800 in 1996 and the 2009 Hudson River ditching involving US Airways. Flight 800 happened in July 1996, just two weeks after AirSafe.com was launched. While there were many web sites like AirSafe.com that provided information on the crash, web sites controlled by major media organizations like CNN and the BBC were by far the most important sources of information for news about the crash.

In 1996, there was no YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, or any other easy to use tools for sharing photos, videos, and other information online. While AirSafe.com had plenty of information about Flight 800, the site had only a tiny impact on the public's awareness of the accident, with only about 35 visits on the day of the crash.

In contrast, within minutes of the US Airways ditching on the Hudson, there were thousands of people around the world who were contacting each other on Twitter, uploading videos to YouTube, and photos to Flickr. True, much of it was simply copied from traditional news organizations, but some of it was both original and unique. In many cases, traditional media relied on the public for information rather than the other way around. By the way, traffic on AirSafe.com was a bit higher in 2009 than it was in 1996, with about 12,000 web site visits on the day of the event, plus at least 5,000 views or downloads of AirSafe.com's initial podcast about the crash.

The changing nature of the Internet, and the dramatic rise in the importance of newer social media applications, makes it necessary for organizations like Bird Strike Committee USA to expand its relationship with the Internet. Fortunately for the Committee, there are many examples of social media use that can be followed, and most of them require no up front or ongoing costs. Perhaps the most pressing needs are in the following three areas: first, a review of existing web site policies and content to ensure that the site continues to rank well for key wildlife hazard related search terms. Second, development of policies or guideance for the use of evolving social media applications, to better coordinate public education and public outreach efforts. Third, encouraging the use of these same social media technologies among the organizations that support the work of the Committee.

While the early development of an informative web site was an innovation that put Bird Strike Committee USA well ahead of similarly structured aviation safety organizations, recent events have highlighted the fact that adopting at least some of the newer social media technologies is essential if Bird Strike Committee USA is to maintain its relatively high online profile.

For additional information about Bird Strike Committee USA, and about bird strike-related issues, please visit birds.airsafe.org.

Selected Social Media Applications Used by AirSafe.com
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Delicious
Flickr
Podcast (main page)
Podcast (subscription)
Mailing List
Prlog.org (online press releases)
Bird Strike Blog
Crash Video Blog

Using Media Attention to Promote the Need for More Thoughtful Data Analysis

Since the very beginning of AirSafe.com, intense media focus on aviation safety events, typically plane crashes, have presented opportunities to bring the work of AirSafe.com to the attention of the media and the general public. The increasing variety of advanced search and social media applications have made it easier than ever to quickly identify opportunities to promote a greater understanding of aviation safety.

The recent FAA policy proposals concerning public access to their bird and wildlife strike database, and the reversal of those proposals, resulted in something unusual when it comes to the the media and aviation safety--intense media attention that didn't involve a plane crash. AirSafe.com used one of the many free search tools from Google to find newspapers and other news media that were writing about that database, allowing AirSafe.com to take specific steps to engage the public and the media in a further dialogue about issues related to analyzing that database.

When the FAA proposed to severely restrict the public's access to the FAA's bird and wildlife strike database in March 2009, it ignited controversy as well as hundreds of news stories related to the proposed policy change. When the DOT and the FAA reversed course the following month, it led to hundreds of other articles, many of them focusing on the strike record of specific airports and airlines.

This spike in interest represented an opportunity to increase AirSafe.com's audience by using the media coverage to direct people to bird and wildlife strike information on AirSafe.com's web sites and blogs.

The key was that many of these articles allowed readers to leave comments. AirSafe.com left comments on many of these articles, making sure that the comments invited the reader to visit AirSafe.com related online resources that provided additional information about bird and wildlife strike related issues.

Finding the articles was particularly easy, with the most important tool being Google Alerts, a free service that allows you tell Google to search for recently published content that contain specific keywords of interest.

The full plan to take advantage of the sudden public attention had three parts:

1. Use Google Alerts to find out what news stories were coming out online (in this case, the search terms [+faa +"bird strike"] were used).

2. Find the articles with the largest potential audience and either post comments to the article (always mentioning at least one of AirSafe.com's bird strike related resources).

3. If an article from a medium to large media organization had contact information for the writer of the story, I'd make a point to contact that person by phone or email and offer to provide information or answer questions.

By using Google Alerts research to find news articles, I was able to easily find dozens of opportunities to post comments to articles and use those posts to direct readers to some of my resources. In addition, I also found relevant media contacts that I could help or that could help me later.

Each of AirSafe.com's comments were a variation of the following message:

Releasing the data was the right thing to do on the part of the FAA. The right thing to do on the part of the public is to use the data as a way to understand a problem and not as the final answer.

Keep in mind that the FAA bird strike database is voluntary, so you can't just look at the raw numbers. Aggressive reporting is only one reason why there may be many reports in the database from a particular airport or airline.

Aviation organizations like the AirSafe.com Foundation offer many insights into how one should approach aviation safety data. Many of their bird strike examples are at birds.airsafe.org and strikevideos.blogspot.com.

It's not too late to do this kind of thing for your organization. Whether it is for bird strikes or for something else related to aviation, if you have a blog or web site that needs a boost of attention and traffic, and there is a major media frenzy that is relevant to your site or blog, try this three step marketing method yourself. Even if you don't place comments, it is an excellent way to identify reporters whom you may want to approach later.