Blogging air travel as if it were a sport

USA Today’s Ben Mutzabaugh was presented with a conundrum several years ago: how to get people excited about a topic like air travel.

When Today in the Sky began in 2002, the editors meant it to be a light supplement to the paper’s travel section, with some helpful tips for flyers. As Mutzabaugh took charge, he had it easy in one way, because USA Today already had a known audience of travelers. USA Today is ubiquitous in every airport, train station and hotel in this country: travel is already on many of its readers’ minds.

“We knew we already had a critical mass in the brand,” Mutzabaugh said. “We just had to bring them to the online content.”

The challenge was giving the traveler audience something they didn’t already know. Mutzabaugh came up with an intriguing solution. He came from a background as a college sports editor, and he had a sense of what sports fans wanted to hear.

“I just took that same filter and applied it to air travel,” he said.

Imagining airlines as teams and passengers as fans, he then asked himself what an air travel fansite would cover. On the “team” side, he listed major rivalries between airlines, airline business rankings and regulations. Then on the fan side, the beat would include anything that affected their flying experience, such as rising costs, new regulations, new airlines, airports, routes and runways.

The concept worked, and six years later, Mutzabaugh has a passionate and eclectic readership composed of airline management, travel agents, frequent flyers and travel fans. He finds the readers discuss airlines with the same passion as sports fans, especially Southwest.

“Southwest is like the Dallas Cowboys of airlines,” he said. ‘People may love ‘em or hate ‘em, but everybody’s got something to say about them.”

Mutzabaugh says he tries to keep the content as varied as possible to match his audience’s interests.

“Blogs are a moving target,” he said. “The readers’ preferences changes day to day. In 2002, people getting bumped from flights was hot, but people got used to hearing about that. The trick is to keep your finger on what’s going on in their minds.”

He also makes a habit of flying regularly to keep up with what customers are experiencing. For Mutzabaugh, being a flyer himself is essential to covering his beat. He uses the experiences to gauge rumors and complaints about airlines.

“Given our name, I know that I could affect airline business if I publish something negative,” he said. “I have to be very careful not to lead readers to make decisions that are unwarranted.”

The blog allows readers many spaces to contribute besides the comments section. There’s a useful weekly series called SkyTips where Mutzabaugh solicits tips on a different theme each week, from how to kill time in airports, to writing airline complaint letters and dealing with rude passengers. He also runs a popular weekly game called Name That Airport, where readers try to identify a photo taken inside a terminal.

Then there are user-generated forums on topics such as “What Airlines Won’t You Fly, and Why” and “Worst passenger experiences,” which several flight attendants have used as a confessional for all their horror stories.

Every Wednesday Mutzabaugh also hosts a live Q&A on air travel. To say he gets a wide range of questions would be an understatement. Here are a few examples:

“What’s your opinion on the new Delta service starting in June from SLC to Midway on 737-800s?”

“My son works at AA maintenance base (MCI), and the rumor is that AA will be closing this base in the very near future. Do you know if this is true?”

“Frontier PR has put out releases regarding their 5th consecutive quarterly profit. In the latest quarter they claim an operating profit, but a huge loss due to bankruptcy related items. Isn’t that still a huge loss, however you spin it?”

“My daughter is flying to China…They return on Monday, May 18th to O’Hare at the international terminal at 6 p.m. She has a flight scheduled for 9:20 p.m. that evening to STL. Is it possible that she can clear customs in two hours to make her Flight on AA?”

“Before Five Guys opened a location in Pittsburgh, I often chose a connection in DCA over a direct flight just to get a burger and fries. Are there any airport eats for which you’d go out of your way?”

The amazing thing is that Mutzabaugh answers everything from the restaurants to the stocks and the security wait, right there and in-depth.

“I’ve always had this gift at remembering minute details, like who went to the college playoffs in 1971,” he said. “It comes in handy when you’re expected to be an expert.”

Today offers some of the most in-depth knowledge of air travel anywhere on the Web and much of the information is reader-contributed. Mutzabaugh and his colleagues have created a space where readers experienced in flying and the airline business are interacting and passionately debating their field. The news pieces meanwhile are rich in detail and incredibly varied, while all staying inside the air travel beat.

Today is one of three travel blogs at USAToday.com, along with a cruise blog and a hotel blog, each with a similar structure. Each blog is supported by both print travel reporters and online staff, working with the chief reporter.

While Today allows for a lot of reader contribution, it could use a bit more on its author. There are no links to Ben’s e-mail or even a profile of him on the site, although his name and face appear on the banner of every page. This is partially because his blog is one of the oldest on the site: newer blogs like USAToday.com’s hotel blog include such information.

Mutzabaugh says there are plans to upgrade the blog with more personal details, as part of a complete restructuring of USAToday.com’s blogs coming sometime in the future.