A fascinating piece in the NYT is headlined “Did You Make Your Connecting Flight? You May Have A.I. to Thank.“
Last month in Chicago, a United Airlines flight to London was ready to depart, but it was still waiting for 13 passengers connecting from Costa Rica. The airline projected they’d miss the flight by seven minutes. Under normal circumstances, they’d all be scrambling to rebook.
But thanks to a new artificial-intelligence-powered tool called ConnectionSaver, the jet was able to wait for them — their checked bags, too — and still arrive in London on time. The system also sent text messages to the late-arriving passengers and the people on the waiting jet to explain what was happening.
[…]
A.I. is poised to change almost every aspect of the customer flying experience, from baggage tracking to personalized in-flight entertainment, said Jitender Mohan, who works with travel and hospitality clients at the technology consulting company WNS.
[…]
On the ground, American Airlines and others are working on an A.I.-powered system American calls Smart Gating — sending arriving aircraft to the nearest available gate with the shortest taxiing time, and if the scheduled arrival gate is in use, quickly determining the best alternate gate. All this could mean fewer frustrating minutes spent waiting on the tarmac.
American introduced 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 17 hours a day in taxi time and 1.4 million gallons of jet fuel a year.
While I’m skeptical of AI on many fronts, this certainly sounds like an unalloyed good. Airlines save money while providing an improved customer experience. That’s a rare win-win in an industry that has been in a race to the bottom in customer service for decades.
They’re also doing small things better:
At United, a companywide challenge last year yielded a plan to make texts sent to fliers more specific about what’s causing delays. Passengers can get frustrated when flights are delayed with no explanation, said Jason Birnbaum, United’s chief information officer.
But tracking the details required, composing an appropriate message and sending it to the right people for 5,000 flights a day would be too much for the staff to handle, Mr. Birnbaum said. Generative A.I. can process all that data and create messages tailored to conditions. For example, passengers booked on a January United flight from San Francisco to Tucson received this text message, along with a new departure time and an apology: “Your inbound aircraft is arriving late due to airport runway construction in San Francisco that limited the number of arrivals and departures for all airlines earlier.”
Having a more detailed explanation can calm travelers’ nerves. Jamie Larounis, a travel industry analyst who flies about 150,000 miles a year, recalled receiving text messages last summer explaining that a storm and a related crew-scheduling problem had delayed his flight from Chicago. “Getting a specific reason for the delay made me feel like the airline had things under control,” he said.
I’m a much less frequent flier than I used to do but, certainly, this is my experience. I get that there are unavoidable delays owing to weather, mechanical issues, and all manner of other obstacles. But it’s frustrating for a flight to be delayed and then delayed again and delayed again with no explanation. Especially if I’m flying, as I frequently do, between DC and Atlanta and there’s no significant weather event in either city. A little communication about what the hell is happening would go a long way to easing that frustration.
Rather obviously, there’s a longer-term concern that AI will replace a lot of human jobs here. Right now, though, it’s enabling humans to do their jobs better. And, in this case, improving the flying experience of other humans.
