Human Factors

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to interview Air New Zealand’s lovely Airpoints Fairy for an article for German designer/developer magazine Create or Die. The Airpoints Fairy is a lovely little creature who works for New Zealand’s national airline – she looks after human beings on Twitter and regularly waves her wand to sparkle some fairy dust on those who believe in magic. The original article has been translated, so I thought I’ll give those who don’t speak German a chance to read my interview with the fairy as well.

Unfortunately I had to shorten the interview a little bit for Create or Die, so here’s what the fairy said in full length (enjoy!):

Hi Airpoints Fairy – how has your day been so far, what have you been up to?

My day has been great; I have spent today forfilling Airpoints member’s wishes to go to the Michael Hill NZ Open this weekend in Arrowtown.

You support Air New Zealand by granting flight-related wishes to your followers. For how long have you beein doing this? Where you contacted by Air New Zealand staff if you would like to take this job on, or was it your idea?

I was born in response to a tweet on Monday 14^th September 2009 – ‘wondering where the Airpoints Fairy lives…. I could do with a few thousand right now’ When I saw this I knew that this was my calling. On 16^th September 2009 the Fairy took flight on Twitter and at 12.35pm the first ‘random act of kindness’ was a pledge of 500 Airpoints Dollars to the girl who had written the first tweet.

Read the blog by the first recipient.

Who can send you wishes?

Airpoints members everywhere can send me wishes – they can do this via twitter.com/airpointsfairy or through my fairyland home at
airpointsfairy.com.

What kind of wishes to you make come true? What was the biggest/smalles wish you helped out with?

I make lots of wishes come true – mostly Airpoints related, always Air NZ related. My smallest wish was granted yesterday, someone wanted 0.33c (Airpoints Dollars) to make her balance an even 100 Airpoints Dollars. Larger wishes included organising Chocolate Kapiti Icecream for someones upcoming flight.

Are people reasonable with what they are asking for, or do you receive wishes asking for too much?

I receive lot’s of wishes, of varying sizes. I only have so much Fairy Dust and I want it to last as long as possible, so I have to vary the size of wishes which I grant. Sometimes small wishes can make a big impact on a person’s travel experience.

Sometimes people get very creative when it comes to wording their wishes – like www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dN1TiKI2Q4 for example. What was the most creative way of you receiving a wish?

This YouTube wish was the most creative by far – I would love to receive more creative wishes like this. It’s great to see passion when it comes to making wishes.

The 12 days of Christmas, when you gave very special prizes to your followers on the 12 days leading up to Christmas Day, were very popular amongst your followers – do you intend to have special events like this more often in the future?

Absolutely. I have recently celebrated Air New Zealand being named Airline of the Year by sending chocolate cakes to 10 lucky followers, so they can have a celebratory afternoon tea. It’s great to have fun with special events.

With www.airpointsfairy.co.nz you allow your followers and people who are not on Twitter a window into your world. What made you decide to put your world on display?

I wanted my followers to see me fly!! Have you seen me do acrobatics in the air? It’s also great that more people can now make wishes (it does make it harder for me to choose who to sprinkle fairy dust on though!!).

Why are there no other fairies to see in your online world? Are your friends busy working for other airlines, or what are they up to?

Fairies are very busy – take the Tooth Fairy for instance, she is one of my good friends but is always on the go collecting teeth while children sleep. I have other friends in Fairyland, you may have seen them.

For Fashion Week you dressed up in a cute little black dress (and since then in several other costumes for different occasions). Pretty shortly Air New Zealand is going to change the uniforms for cabin staff. Are your going to wear the same uniform in your Twitter avatar to support Air NZ staff with the new uniform during the first couple of weeks after introduction?

Funny you should mention that, I am just having my uniform made at the moment. It’s smaller than the other uniforms, so it is a bespoke piece. Keep an eye out and let me know what you think!! I think I will look great in it.

Have you ever travelled with Air New Zealand yourself? If yes, what was your most memorable experience?

Obviously I often fly myself around. But if I am going to a destination where Air New Zealand fly then I usually will choose to travel onboard. The service is fabulous, and it nice to give my wings a rest (especially on a longhaul journey).

Thanks for taking some time to answer all these questions, lovely fairy, – and keep doing the awesome work you’re currently involved with!

Normally I love Air New Zealand. Although they sometimes seem to be a little under-staffed, the overall travel experience is always great. And they develop amazing things for the web – for example How far can I go? and Home sweet as.

But today I thought they might have gone a bit over the top with the urge to deliver a perfect user experience. As Gold Elite members of their loyalty programme, Kai and I had a big envelope in the mail today, containing our new ePass. The ePass is a SIMcard sized tag, that can be used to check in quicker by waving the tag about 2-3 cm of a kiosk. Koru Club access is also faster, maybe because you don’t have to talk to the friendly lady who usually checks your boarding pass anymore. And the craziest thing: they want me to stick it to the back of my mobile phone! Are they insane???? I’m not sticking anything to my iPhone! Ok, there’s another option, you can also stick it to something else that you always carry with you when you travel. I guess, that would be my Air New Zealand Airpoints Card. So what’s the point of it? The checking in procedure at the electronic kiosks has been great most of the time anyway. Apart from all those days when they were out of order, but this is likely to happen with the new system as well.

Air New Zealand ePass

I hope that there are some real advantage to this, maybe I’ll find out about when I’m traveling the next time…

Update: With the mPass iPhone app there’s no need for me to still carry the ePass for traveling. Flight details are now automatically loaded into the application, and a barcode created for scanning at both Koru lounge and  boarding gate make the ePass redundant for me.