February 10, 2006
United Kingdom
10 February, 2006
Virgin’s Global Flyer website, powered by Tridion, receives 15million hits in 24 hours
London, UK– 10th February 2006 – Global interest in Steve Fossett’s “Ultimate Flight” challenge has been intense, as its dedicated website received more than 15 million hits in the 24 hours after take off.
Steve Fossett’s challenge, to set the record for the longest flight of all time,has caught the imagination of the public. With the backing of Sir Richard Branson’s airline, Virgin Atlantic, Steve set off on his 26,000 mile, 80 hour journey on Wednesday 8th February.
Anticipating the global interest in the flight, Virgin Atlantic set up a dedicated website -www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com. The site, designed by Conchango using Tridion’s Content Management Solution, has been tailored to answer every question and provide minute by minute updates on Steve’s progress.
The team behind the site have revealed that the most popular page has proved to be Steve’s ‘mission tracking area’ which provides live updates from Mission Control and the Press briefings.
“We knew that Steve’s flight would generate a lot of interest but we’re delighted that the website, which we worked hard to develop, can cope with the unprecedented volume of traffic it has received. In the hour of take off alone there were almost half a million hits” said Kevin Stass, Mission Control Director. “This is not your typical website: the information needs updating minute by minute and because of its design, we are able to use people here at mission control to write the stories rather than relying IT support staff”.
Richard McCarthy, Product Marketing Manager for Tridion said, “We are delighted to see the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer website being used to its full potential. The ability to constantly update the site with new information is just the sort of thing our systems were built to enable and it’s evident that the public are keen to see the very latest details.”
Steve plans to circumnavigate the globe before flying across the North Atlantic again and landing at an airport near London on Saturday 11th February.
(Pictures available at: http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com/Press/Pictures/index.jsp)