Airport News:

Employee Blog Provides Front-Line Information about San Diego Airport  

SAN DIEGO – May 15 – After nearly 80 years of sending planes into the atmosphere, San Diego International Airport (SDIA) has launched a unique public communications tool … into the blogopshere. An employee blog called the Goodwill Ambassablog, authored by rank-and-file Airport Authority employees, is now available to the general public at www.ambassablog.com.
 

Produced internally and at virtually no cost with freely available software, the Goodwill Ambassablog provides employee perspectives on Lindbergh Field in the form of regularly updated posts, along with photos, videos, music clips, polls, links and a variety of other features. Visitors to the site are able to submit comments on any post. They can also subscribe to the blog and have updates automatically sent to their email address or RSS feed reader.

Recent posts on the blog have addressed a wide variety of happenings at the airport and in the aviation industry, and all posts are archived for easy retrieval. Among recent topics covered:

• Veterans’ employment services

• Sustainability initiatives

• Airport land use planning

• Other aviation-related blogs

• Cross-border terminal

• Virgin America inaugural flight

• Southwest Airlines boarding procedures

• Floating airport concept

• Time-lapse video of a Boeing 777 being constructed

Goals of the Goodwill Ambassablog include enhancing the Airport Authority’s transparency to the public it serves, empowering employees to serve as front-line communicators and supporting the Airport Authority’s Goodwill Ambassador Program, which trains employees to be effective “ambassadors” for the organization. The blog also serves as a source of story ideas for local media interested in covering the airport.

“We’re pleased to offer our employees and the public this innovative and interactive new information portal about the many exciting things going on at San Diego International Airport,” said Thella F. Bowens, President/CEO of the Airport Authority. “With over 2,500 visitors in its first four months, we’re thrilled it’s catching on as a useful resource for those interested in the airport.”

As a pioneer in public agency employee blogging, the Goodwill Ambassablog has been presented as a case study to various federal and state agencies. The online Thirty Thousand Feet Aviation Directory has called it “a really fresh and creative way for airport employees to share information and activities with others."