If there's one time of the year that lends itself to aviation marketing and lots of goodwill, it's Christmas time. 2016 has been no exception.

On the ground:

• Changi hosted a Christmas Pokemon parade. 
• Heathrow was visited by teddy bear seniors. A simple concept executed well. It also ties in nicely with their customised welcome home banner campaign.
• Edinburgh Airport surprised passengers with Christmas fairies and gifts. 
• Bristol Airport took to social with a virtual gifts campaign. 
• American Airlines took us behind the scenes at ORD as they set up terminal theming. 

In the air:

• RyanAir understands sometimes Christmas with the family isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nicely done.
• WestJet's Christmas Miracle campaign has been going for around three years and the most recent instalment profiled the town of Fort McMurray which suffered from a devastating wildfire earlier in 2016. The video explores how WestJet helped to restore the Christmas spirit in the community. 
• Air New Zealand's Summer Wonderland will be appreciated most by those down under. Ronan Keating and Julian Dennison humourously adapt the classic Christmas 'Winter Wonderland' tune to suit NZ.
• Finnair's 2016 Christmas campaign takes the classic approach by focusing on how the airline connects family and friends during the festive period. 
• Emirates launched a new Christmas menu across all cabin classes for the first time. Menu items include turkey, chestnut stuffing, 'yule log', and cranberry jus. 
• United flew children to see Santa. 
• AA also flew families of fallen soldiers.
• Virgin Atlantic is serving up a 3 course Christmas meal.
• Jetblue encouraged travellers to take a holiday before the Christmas holidays to reduce their stress levels. 
• Delta employees donated 500 thousand dollars to those in need but unfortunately this great achievement flew under the radar. 
  
  

My pick for 2016? Heathrow. It's beautifully made and the proof is in the pudding: 4.7 million views on Youtube and international media coverage. 

Enjoy the rest of this issue. Have a safe Christmas and New Years. I'll see you in 2017. 

Cheers,
Michael Meloni
+61 410 223 843
michael@passengerwise.com

One of the world's busiest airports, Amsterdam Schiphol, has a new website. It's clean, informative and on brand. It's also a fine example of a website that is designed to guide and help customers find what they are looking for... to an extent. 

For example, the website guides visitors efficiently through the process of finding information about a flight, providing you know and understand the way in which it wants to help you. "Enter the flight number, destination or airline". That's straight forward and useful for travellers, but I think some customers will find it frustrating, especially those meeting passengers. I tried to find a full list of arrivals or departure information for today and came up empty. I've seen countless people only know a limited piece of information about a flight ("I know they are landing at 8:30PM but that's all I know") and it's these types of scenarios where a full list of flights beats a restrictive search. 

Overall, it's a top effort.

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PassengerWise is curated by Michael Meloni. You can learn more about Michael and his projects on his LinkedIn profile (don't hesitate to connect).