The real-time dimension of social media has challenged businesses to rethink their slow, deliberative processes in order to address the speed with which their brands can be damaged. Every minute it takes to hold conference calls, sit in meetings, get legal review and wordsmith offical responses is a minute in which thousands of uncomplimentary messages can be distributed to millions of consumers.

Today, Delta Airlines has shown how it can be done.

Yesterday, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert O’Hair uploaded a quick-and-dirty video to YouTube expressing unhappiness with Delta. The video, shot on board a flight from Baltimore to Atlanta with what seems to be the video camera on a mobile phone, expresses displeasure with Delta’s baggage policies for military personnel. Members of O’Hair’s unit, returning from Afghanistan, had military authorization for four pieces of luggage each, but upon check-in at BWI, Delta’s personnel told them the policy for coach limited them to three bags. They each had to pay $200 out of their own pockets for their fourth bags, a total of $2,800.

It no longer requires media-savvy to know you can gain traction with a story like this by engaging the online community. (Or, from another perspective, pretty much everybody is media-savvy these days.) The video has over 200,000 views less than 24 hours later, and has amassed more than 1,800 likes more than 2,000 comments.

The controversy migrated quickly to the Delta Facebook page, which does not allow visitors to post comments to the wall, leading those outraged by the situation to leave comments to unrelated Delta posts.

Delta responded quickly with a blog post and a Facebook update. The statements didn’t satisfy much of anybody, though. While they expressed sincere gratitude for the soldiers’ service, they also merely reiterated the policy of three free bags for military personnel in coach and four for those lucky enough to get a seat in first class.

By today, however, Delta announced a new policy with an update to the blog post and on Facebook. According to the blog, “U.S. military personnel traveling on orders in First and Business Class can check up to five bags at no charge.”

According to The Huffington Post, Delta earned about $3.7 billion last year from those annoying extra fees like checked bags, snacks and alcohol. In most companies that haven’t adjusted to the realities of the real-time world, it would take anywhere from days to months to alter a policy that affects that kind of revenue. Delta pulled it off overnight.

While some are unimpressed—one comment to the Facebook update claims, “Delta did NOT do it right. We the people did. We forced them to do the right thing”—the fact is that businesses are run by people and people make mistakes. Somewhere, there was a disconnect between the military baggage allotment and what the Army was authorizing soldiers to carry. While Delta may have dropped the ball on the policy in the first place, the speed with which they responded to an emerging crisis and took action is noteworthy, as is the airline’s readiness to engage with the public (unlike competitor Spirit Air, which has shrugged off criticism over its marketing campaign that capitalizes on Weinergate, the tale of U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner and his ill-advised tweets and Facebook messages).

Today’s rapid response isn’t the first signal that Delta is taking the real-time web seriously. The airline recently launched a second major Twitter account, Delta Assist, specifically to handle real-time problems customers encounter while traveling. Nine employees staff the account, responding quickly to problems with tweets like, “I apologize for that. I can look into this for you. If I can help, please follow @DeltaAssist & DM me the details. Thanks. ^KT.” (^KT are the initials of the staffer responding.)

The Facebook post is attracting lingering questions about reimbursement for the soldiers who had to shell out $200 each, and it’ll be interesting to see how engaged Delta remains on these issues.

But for organizations grappling with the challenge of real-time feedback and how quickly they can turn nasty for the brand, Delta’s nimbleness should be instructive. This is no small organization and bureaucracy is surely a legacy for Delta as much as any other big company. If Delta can overcome decades of slow, deliberative processes and make a swift, sound, smart decision, why can’t other companies?