Decided to leave the cave and go mobile to do the writing thing today. And why not? Both of the pieces I hope to crank out are of a mobile ilk, the weather on this early April Paris Monday is Spring Fever inducing, and a new local wifi-enabled coffee house (Le Café Lomi) has opened its doors nearby…a perfect storm!
The battery icon says I have 2:11 before all goes dark, so let’s start clacking.
This past 21-December I packed up My Missus and The Boy for a 5-day trip to visit family in Chicago (far more accurate to say that My Missus packed me and The Boy up, but I don’t see any reason to ruin a good story with facts…except, paradoxically, I do). We left the flat early that morning, all media-delivery devices fully charged and ready for the 12+ hours we would spend in the air travel envelope (bubble?), and headed for the RER B train that would deliver us to Charles de Gaulle (the airport, not the long dead general and president). En route I decided to check our flight status, and having successfully carried that out I then thought, “Let’s see if anyone is awake at the Air France Twitter switch on this fine Saturday.” Not being the most avid Twitterer, this was actually a bit of personal evolution on my part.
Within just moments I received a response, and a somewhat personal one at that (as evidenced by the reference to my day’s destination)! Shocked and delighted, I immediately tweeted back.
Then my wheels started turning…hmm…yes, I would look for ways to keep my @AirFranceFR friend apprised as we moved through the system.
I am sorry to report that the hinted-at upgrade did not come through, but aside from that petty gripe I was delighted with the quick and personal response I received to a tweet that was really doing not much more than filling space. It made a strong enough impression, in fact, that upon landing in Chicago I tossed out a tweet in praise of the airline (which for me is akin to saying publicly something — anything — nice about the city of Detroit).
More fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys, right? So much fun, I have to say, that I resolved to repeat my Tweeting ways for the return flight.
Again, a personal response to a Tweet sent into the wind by the very-much-on-the-stick Air France Twitter team! And, again, I was delighted (not in small part because the check-in line sped up just after I sent my initial tweet…related?). This back-and-forth made an even deeper impression on me than the one tied to our inbound flight, though, one strong enough to cause me to reconsider my long-held stance that with little or no exception Air France personnel are on par with the vacuous folks manning the register at Starbucks. Or the outer-space-sourced customer service personnel working for every major PC manufacturer (“You has a proh-blem? You must reinstall Windows.”). The fact is that as a result of that personal Twitter touch, when I speak of Air France I no longer default to the story of how the airline bumped me from a July 2005 Paris-to-New York flight and gave my seat away because my turn at the check-in desk began 58 minutes prior to takeoff (company policy states that you have to check-in no less than one hour before takeoff). No. Instead, now when the subject of Air France comes up, I whip out my AF-Twitter tale and watch jaws drop.
And one of these fine days I WILL talk — or rather, tweet — my way into an upgrade.
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