Por: Julie Weed
Last month in Chicago, a United Airlines flight bound for London was ready to depart but was still waiting for 13 passengers connecting from Costa Rica. The airline expected that they would miss the flight due to a seven-minute delay.Under normal circumstances, everyone would have rushed to change flights.
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However, Thanks to a new artificial intelligence tool called ConnectionSaver, the plane was able to wait for them —including their checked bags—and still make it to London on time. The system also sent text messages to late arriving passengers and those waiting on the plane to explain what was happening.
AI still can’t find a space for your carry-on, but it could save you the 40-gate race to catch the connecting flight before the gate closes, and could also eliminate other common travel problems.
It’s not just United. Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and other airlines have been working to develop new AI capabilities that could make flying easier for passengers. According to Helane Becker, an airline industry analyst for investment bank TD Cowen, Airlines are also using this technology to reduce costs and optimize their operations, including saving fuel. Although many airlines are developing their programs independently, the success of any innovation could become an industry standard.
AI is about to change almost every aspect of the customer flight experiencefrom baggage tracking to personalized in-flight entertainment, said Jitender Mohan, who works with clients in the travel and hospitality industry at technology consultancy WNS.
Saving fuel and frustration
Since 2021, Artificial intelligence has helped Alaska Airlines dispatchers plan more efficient routes. “It’s like Google Maps, but in the air”explained Vikram Baskaran, the airline’s vice president of information technology services.
Two hours before a flight, the system reviews weather conditions, any airspace that will be closed, and all commercial flight plans. and private aircraft registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, to suggest the most efficient route. AI assimilates “an amount of information that no human brain could process”said Pasha Saleh, director of corporate development and pilot for Alaska Airlines.
By 2023, about 25 percent of Alaska Airlines flights will use the system to shave a few minutes off flight time. According to Baskaran, that savings amounted to about 41,000 flight minutes and half a million gallons of fuel.
On the ground, American Airlines and other companies are working on an artificial intelligence-based system that American Airlines calls Smart Gating, which sends arriving aircraft to the nearest available gate with the shortest taxi time and, if the scheduled arrival gate is in use, quickly determines the best alternative gate. All of this could reduce frustrating minutes of waiting on the runway.
American Airlines deployed Smart Gating at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 2021 and now employs it at six airports, including Chicago O’Hare and Miami International. The airline estimates it saves seventeen hours a day in taxi time and 1.4 million gallons of jet fuel a year.
Mohan claims that using AI as a virtual parking assistant could save up to twenty percent of the time taxiing, and that the greatest benefits would be obtained at the largest airports.
Better and faster customer service
Rapidly evolving generative AI—think ChatGPT—is helping airlines better communicate with passengers. At United, a company-wide challenge last year led to a plan to make text messages sent to passengers more accessible.be more specific about the causes of delays. According to Jason Birnbaum, United’s chief information officer, passengers can become frustrated when flights are delayed without explanation.
But tracking down the necessary details, crafting an appropriate message and sending it to the right people for 5,000 flights a day would be too much for the staff, Birnbaum said. Generative AI can process all that data and create messages tailored to the conditions. For example, passengers on a January United flight from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona, They received this text message, along with a new departure time and an apology.: “Your inbound flight is delayed due to runway work at San Francisco Airport, which has limited the number of arrivals and departures for all airlines.”
A more detailed explanation may calm travelers’ nerves. Jamie Larounis, a travel industry analyst who flies about 150,000 miles a year, He recalls receiving text messages last summer explaining that a storm and a programming issue of the crew had delayed their flight from Chicago. “Receiving a concrete reason for the delay made me feel like the airline had things under control”he said.
Generative AI is also good at summarizing text, making it a powerful tool for reading emails. Last year, Alaska Airlines was one of the airlines that began using artificial intelligence to manage customer messages more effectively. The airline system “lee” each email and summarizes the issues raised.
“Before, we read what came in first and responded to requests as they came in.”Baskaran said, but now the system helps prioritize emails. For example, An urgent request about an upcoming flight may take priority over a complaint about an earlier flight.
The system also helps a human agent decide how to respond, for example, by offering a voucher to the customer, and can draft an initial written response. “The person makes the decision, but it is optimized”Baskaran said.
Despite all the advantages that AI promises for airlines and passengers, the technology has some flaws. For example, it does not always provide accurate information. In 2022, an Air Canada chatbot wrongly promised a traveller that if they booked a full-fare flight for a relative’s funeral, they could receive a bereavement fee after the fact. When the traveler filed a small claims case, Air Canada tried to claim that the bot was an independent entity, “responsible for one’s own actions”but a The court found Air Canada liable and ordered it to pay nearly $800 in damages and fees.
Yet, As AI develops and airlines race to find more uses for it, passengers could see even more benefits. “As a customer and a business owner, this is one of the biggest technology disruptions in the last five to eight years.”Mohan concluded.
