RyanAir is in no position to play games on social media
By: Woody Bass
Tags: Twitter, Social Media, Public Relations

It is pretty clear that social media has become an important tool for companies in a world where everyone wants to be the center of attention. Sometimes a company is so eager for attention they will invoke their inner two-year-old and use the medium to insert themselves into just about any story and have no issues taking a direct shot at one of their competitors.

In fact, SocialMediaToday.com even encourages it. There is no doubt this tactic has caught the attention and created a significant amount of engagement with social media audiences everywhere. However, there are some instances where it is probably advisable for those in glass houses, or in the case of one particular company — airplanes, should not cast stones.

Case & Point

According to a BusinessInsider.com report, a British Airways flight scheduled to travel from London to Düsseldorf, Germany inadvertently ended up in Scotland — 525 miles from its intended destination.

Naturally, in the brutal space that is social media, a competitor is going to jump on this opportunity to take a shot off the airline’s bow. That is exactly what budget airline RyanAir did when tweeting “Hey @British_Airways, we have a present for you” in March and included an image of a book cover that read “Geography for Dummies.”

RyanAir attempts to troll British Airways on Twitter.

Clever! But here’s the issue…

It is probably not the best idea to troll a competitor after recently being crowned the “worst airline” for six years running by a consumer group and after also facing the very same situation you’re attempting to troll British Airways for just a few months before. Oh, and should I mention that the organization didn’t exactly do a very stellar job of taking care of their passengers when attempting to handle the issue?

A RyanAir flight carrying 201 passengers destined for Greece instead was diverted to and landed in Romania due to bad weather conditions, according to a report published in The Sun. This occurred just two months before the British Airways disaster. What was RyanAir’s brilliant and only (reported) answer to address this crisis? They offered the passengers an 18 hours bus ride. That’s it.

One passenger, according to The Sun article, took to Twitter to divulge additional details about how passengers had to spend the night in the Romanian airport without providing any food, lodging or any other assistance. To make matters worse, she also posts on Twitter that the airport staff forced them to leave the airport.

RyanAir passenger takes to Twitter to voice her frustrations after being re-routed to an alternate destination.

Let this be a lesson kids…

RyanAir’s attempt to troll British Airways falls right in a long line of irresponsible decision making. Customers don’t quickly forget when they are treated as poorly as RyanAir’s well-documented history of terrible customer service. Social media will always be quick with brutally honest responses and their own troll jobs. One individual turned the tables on the airline responding with an image of the same book cover except this one was titled “Customer Service for Dummies.”

A brutal response to RyanAir’s attempt at trolling British Airways on Twitter.

For the casual spectator, seeing companies troll each other is kind of fun. It is like a comedic social media cage match at times. However, if you insist on playing the social media troll game, it might be best to make sure your own house is clean so that your own issues don’t come back and slap you in the face.