How Artificial Intelligence Determines Which Airline Stories Go Viral
Skift Take
As a Dataminr executive told us, "There is no such thing as a secret now." If it happens on an airplane and someone puts it on social media, it is bound to become news. That's just how it goes now, for better or worse.
Early one afternoon in October 2016, CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave was taking the day off, having brunch with three friends in Los Angeles, when his phone began pinging. With increasing urgency, colleagues were sending a tweet, showing a smoldering American Airlines aircraft at Chicago O'Hare. They asked, what did he know?
He reached American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein just after 161 passengers and nine crew members safely evacuated from the burning Boeing 767-300. Soon, Van Cleave filed a basic story about an incident the NTSB would later say was an uncontained fire in the airline's right engine, caused by a failed turbine disk. Pilots aborted takeoff when the plane reached reached 154 miles per hour, making this among the more serious U.S. incidents of the past decade.
A few years ago, his quick reporting might have constituted a major scoop, but this day, Van Cleave was keeping pace with competitors, most of whom learned the news as he did. Rather than acting o
