How United Uses AI to Keep Passengers Informed During Weather Delays

We’ve all been there: the skies look clear from the terminal, but your airline is delaying your flight, citing bad weather. The culprit might be an imminent storm in the area, looming just behind those fluffy white clouds, or an active storm system across the country, delaying an arriving aircraft or stranding crew out of position.

Now, inconvenienced United passengers can expect to receive texts and emails detailing why their flights have been delayed, including for mechanical faults, air traffic control issues, and severe weather. The airline is using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to explain to passengers why their flights are being impacted.

Photo: United Airlines, Boeing 777-200ER. Courtesy of Denver International Airport.

United says the updates are part of its “industry-leading effort to give travelers as much real-time information as possible about their trip.”

For the past few years, the airline has used teams of customer service representatives to compose and send messages to customers, giving them nearly instantaneous updates about their flights, from gate changes to boarding times.

Now, these trained customer service staff sit with flight operations teams in United’s Network Operations Centre in Chicago’s Willis Tower to understand and parse exactly why flights have been disrupted and convey that to passengers. Generative AI helps the teams review flight data and write personalized messages to impacted passengers, telling the “complete story of a flight change,” United said.

When the cause is weather-related, these updates will include links to live radar maps provided by flight-tracking platform FlightAware, highlighting flight paths and weather impacting them.

Photo: United Airlines. Courtesy of Denver International Airport.

These weather maps will also be accessible from within the United app and displayed at gates when flights are delayed.

“With more people traveling this summer than ever, we wanted to give our customers an easier way to stay connected to real-time information about their flight, and texting was the simplest solution,” Jason Birnbaum, chief information officer at United, said in a statement.

“We know customers appreciate transparency, and by combining innovative technology-enabled tools with people power, we can give more people even more in-the-moment details about their flight,” he added.

United said the new update system was live over the Fourth of July, as it flew a record five million passengers between June 28 and July 8 and contended with the landing of Hurricane Beryl.

Photo: Courtesy of Denver International Airport.

United canceled 486 flights on Monday due to the storm after it was forced to halt operations at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH). Across the industry, around 1,500 flights were canceled and 3,500 delayed.

Airlines aren’t required to offer customers compensation or meal or hotel vouchers when delays and cancellations are outside their control, such as in cases of severe weather. United offers impacted travelers automatic rebooking from within its app, sparing them to line up at customer service desks or call helplines.

The app’s self-service tools allow inconvenienced customers to select rebooking options, access any meal or hotel vouchers they’re eligible for, and track their baggage.