ATLANTA -- With travel picking up for the holidays, many airlines are turning to social media, like Twitter, to get quick answers to passengers who are texting them with problems.
"I honestly didn't know that I could get on Twitter and check the airlines and ask them questions," said Nathan Tims, a passenger waiting for his flight to Seattle at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Others say they instantly go to Twitter to contact their airline when there's a problem.
"They got back to me quicker than I thought," said traveler Kingsley Akem. "If I had to walk up to a counter and say 'I have this problem,' it could have taken hours, but I tweeted, and (American Airlines) got back to me in 30 minutes."
One exception is AirTran. Because the carrier is phasing out service, its passengers must either call customer service or visit a ticket counter to get answers.
We decided to give Twitter a try.
We tweeted American Airlines (@AmericanAir) to check on a flight schedule, then to United-Continental (@United) to do the same thing. Next, we tweeted Southwest (@SouthwestAir) to find out when service will start from Atlanta, and next to Delta (@DeltaAssist) to verify an international departure.
All of the carriers said they had fulltime staffs answering tweets.
We heard back from American Airlines with our answer in less than 5 minutes and from Delta in 11 minutes. It took 2 hours to get a reply from Southwest, and as of 6 p.m. Friday, we had not yet received a reply from United-Continental.
The bottom line on this one is if you need vital information, make sure that you have a backup plan.