Friday, November 03, 2006

A Glimmer of Hope on Airport Greetings

Managing Durham’s brand is a key responsibility of DCVB. One of the things that undermines the Durham brand the most is how the community is positioned by airlines. Tickets, credit card receipts, listings of cities serviced, gate listings and onboard announcements often create havoc.

But I was very impressed on a US Airways flight Sunday afternoon from the airport in Philadelphia to RDU. The gate listing read “Raleigh-Durham,” which is much better than some airports, e.g., DFW where it is truncated to just Raleigh or Raleigh-Dur because the gate readers aren’t long enough.

The ticket receipt read “Raleigh,” so there is still work to do with US Airways’ Accounting Department, and the website listed “cities served,” although it was really only a listing of airports, so someone looking to see if US Airways serves Durham had to look down under the “Rs.”

But the flight crew was nearly flawless. Departure announcements were careful to refer to Raleigh-Durham Airport rather than treating the name of the airport like it was an actual city or, worse, truncating to the name of one particular city.

The weather announcements reverted back to “Raleigh,” but that is probably because the FAA beacon recording for the pilots is mistaken.

On arrival, the crew referred to Raleigh and Durham, so passengers understood that, while the plane landed at RDU, an airport, the owner communities are separate and distinct brands.

It's only one crew, one flight, so we still need to work with RDU and other destinations it serves to come up with a holistic solution.

But kudos to this crew for the respect it paid to the airline’s brand, the airport’s brand and the destination brands.

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