The FINANCIAL -- Scandinavian Airlines just won the SimpliFlying Awards of Excellence in Social Media in the Best use of social media in a crisis communications category.

The coveted award honors SAS' hard work to provide customers with instant communication via Facebook during the ash cloud crisis earlier this year that saw hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded across the world.

"For us the most important thing was to help all our customers that were stranded, which meant we had to be proactive and approach them in a non-traditional way. Facebook created the opportunity to have a dialogue with thousands of customers and keep them continuously update through this crisis. We immediately created a Facebook team that worked almost around the clock to reply to all customer queries and managed to answer almost every posting within five minutes. We also added over a thousand new fans each day," says Christina Ericsson, Director, Online Strategy and Communications.

According to the jury, SAS had specficially impressed them with the quick set-up of an internal Facebook team, using volunteering resources from various departments.

"For SAS it also highlighted the need for a different approach to communicate with customers during irregularities and crisis, and we have since managed to develop this even further and can now offer a superior customer service with near-instant feedback through Facebook. It is important for SAS to be present where are customers are present, such as Facebook and Twitter," says Ericsson.

The award was handed out earlier today in London during the Social media for the aviation industry conference, organized by SimpliFlying.

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