Scoot's virtual flight a crashing failure

The low-cost, long-haul airline launched its “World's Longest Virtual Flight” campaign last week, inviting people to fly virtually to Sydney to celebrate the first anniversary of its maiden flight to the Australian city from Singapore.

Fans were invited to board the virtual plane by checking in on a Facebook app by 8 pm last night. The '10,000-seat flight' was scheduled to take off at 9 pm.

During the 16-hour flight, fans needed to keep tapping every 60 seconds to stay in the game. The last player still 'flying' would win SG$20,000 (US$16,017) in cash and a year's worth of free Scoot flights.

Soon after the contest started, people found they had been kicked out of the contest. Only about 2,000 people successfully boarded the 10,000-seat virtual plane.

Negative comments spread quickly on Scoot’s Facebook page. Some examples:

• FlyScoot has FAILED big time in their advertising campaign, 'the world's longest virtual flight'. Many people like me have got kicked out due to their error of 'turbulence' (technical glitch) and also not able to login to even start the game. They are expecting 10,000 participants initially and the game only managed 2,100 participants for the game. What an utter disappointment after getting everyone all hyped up for the game.
• You are still going on with the competition after knowing that majority of the participants were unfairly bumped out of the competition due to 'turbulence'? This is shocking to say the least.
• It's 11pm now and I'm still stuck on the apps. Please update the issue. We know is a technical issue and is not our computer issue. Please at least update what you guys are doing.

Some user comments even called out the agencies they believed to be involved in the fiasco. That distinction, and the ire of angry users, belongs to iNEO. A spokesperson for that agency told Campaign Asia-Pacific that it is looking into the problems as well. 

For quite some time, no brand response to the upset users appeared. Some even claimed their negative comments were deleted (see left, click to enlarge), although this could not be confirmed.

Before midnight, the airline posted a message (below right, click to enlarge) saying that the contest would continue despite the problems.

A Scoot spokesperson confirmed to Campaign Asia-Pacific that there were technical problems, that the brand was still looking into the problems and that the contest was still going on. The airline will respond further to complaints once the winner is announced.

“The technical system for the game application was obviously not ready for the load,” Ryan Lim, business director of Blugrapes, told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “The community on social media is already drawing negative correlations from this campaign to its service levels and its ability to deliver on its promises.”

He said the immediate impact is on its brand equity with its consumers and on its social credibility. This will cause the brand to suffer in its ability to influence the purchasing decisions of consumers on social media.

Lim suggested the brand should address the problem and take an apologetic stance. 

“It would help by updating the actions and steps taken by Scoot to address the application failure issue,” he said. “There has been none since 12 last night. Transparency is not about the resolution, but rather the steps taken by the brand to address the issue. Silence increases speculation, confusion and frustration. Step up, don't clamp up!”

The brand now seems to have decided on a more communicative course of action, posting a number of messages, including one that cites fairness to the people who did manage to board the flight and have been clicking steadfastly since last night (left, click to enlarge).

Update April 29, 2014: A spokesperson from Scoot got in touch to provide futher context and clarity on the "World's Longest Flight" Campaign. According to Scoot there was indeed a technical glitch in the first running of the campaign, but it was remedied and ran again to a successful conclusion in Singapore. The team then took the contest to Taipei where it ran without any technical fault. "On our part, we have accepted the initial failure but we have also worked hard to turn it around into a successful event. The experience and lessons learned with this contest was made into a case study which we presented at several conferences," said Scoot.