United Airlines wants to get much better at explaining delays to passengers, including maintenance videos and AI-generated updates that tell travelers what is actually happening with their flight. Since the uncertainty is often worse than the delay itself, this is unmitigated good news.
United Airlines Wants AI To Explain Flight Delays, And That Could Be A Great Thing
While United Airlines already does a great job in offering more detailed reasons behind flight delays and cancellations, CEO Scott Kirby says the airline is working on new technology to better explain irregular operations to passengers, including videos about maintenance issues and AI-generated updates that can describe what is happening with each flight.
Speaking at Bernstein’s 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference, Kirby described United’s broader technology investment as a key part of building a “brand loyal” airline. He said United has spent years modernizing its systems, organizing data, and moving away from older technology platforms, which now gives the airline more ability to use that data in customer-facing ways.
Kirby’s explanation:
The goal is to get to a point where anytime there’s a flight delay, we tell customers in clear, plain English…We’re going to start to send them videos, like maintenance videos and cool stuff about exactly what’s going on with their airplane and why, and try to give them really good information. Generally, I mean, most people in here fly, and if you know, it’s the uncertainty that’s a killer.
You walk up to a gate and it says your flight’s on time, and you’re supposed to be boarding, and there’s no airplane at the gate. I don’t think that happens at United, but that does happen at some airlines. It infuriates you. Giving people good information. The goal I’ve set for the team is pretend I’m on the flight, and I’ve asked what’s going on with my flight. What would you tell me? I want to tell all of our customers that. We’ve been doing that…
I got some phenomenal statistics when we do it and do it well, but it’s really hard to do for 6,000 flights a day, especially when there’s weather and it’s uncertain. Thunderstorms. Maybe the airport’s closing, maybe it’s not. You don’t know. It’s really hard to do. I think we’re probably two to three times better than any other airline in the world, just because we’re the only airline that’s really worked on it and tried to do it. We’ve decided that the current path that we’re on is never going to get to the nirvana that we want. We’ve started a brand new work path that’s built native AI, building the right data so that it doesn’t require any human intervention.
The AI will be able to tell you about every flight, and what’s going on with every flight with no human intervention, just from all the other data that we have and everything else that it can see about the system. I think that’ll be great for customers. It won’t only help with customers, it’ll cause more brand loyal customers to fly United. It’ll be unique. It’ll feel different than any other airline in the world when we’re able to do that. I’m convinced we’re going to find all kinds of ways to run our operation more efficiently when we’ve built that. That to me is what AI can do. When we’re building that, we’re going to be able to run the airline better, a lot better than we could before…
Kirby understands that there are two problems: delays and communication.
Maintenance Videos And AI Delay Explanations
As Kirby noted, “The uncertainty’s a killer.” I could not agree more.
Passengers can handle bad news. What they cannot handle is silence or vague excuses, especially when the delay is rolling.
Kirby also said United has concluded that its current process will not get the airline to the level of communication it wants, so it is now building an AI-based system that can use United’s data to explain what is happening on each flight without relying on manual human intervention. His view is that this could make United feel meaningfully different from other airlines. He is probably right, though it won’t be long until others mimic United’s approach, as Ameircan Airlines recently started doing in providing detailed (text) reasons for delays.
We do not need AI to writee a fake inspirational story about a hotel housekeeper, but using AI to synthesize operational data and explain a flight delay in clear language is what that technology does best..
United has a huge amount of data behind the scenes: data like aircraft location, inbound crew status, maintenance logs, ATC programs, weather constraints, gate availability, and connection loads. If AI can amalgamate that info into a useful explanation when a delay occurs, that would be a genuine improvement.
United’s already doing a great job in offering detailed info on delays, but if AI enables it to accurately automate this function, as View From The Wing notes, it would be “next level amazing, and the kind of thing that I think would help differentiate the airline and not just among aviation geeks.”
CONCLUSION
United wants to use AI and richer operational data to explain flight delays more clearly, including maintenance videos and plain-English updates to passengers. This is an excellent investment. When a flight is delayed, passengers want honesty, not miracles. If United can use AI to do that better, it will be a benefit to all flyers.
I was diverted to OKC the other night on a LAX-DFW flight and we spent 4 hours on the ground because other DFW bound diversions to OKC were consolidated in to our aircraft. Assigning passengers seats, doing weight & balance, and shuttling people across the tarmac to a remote stand at OKC took a really long time. Does United really want to give people that much detail? It makes it harder to claim “weather” as the reason for the delay.
Let’s be honest – are you going to believe whatever nicely formatted half truths the AI spews out, or are you going to go to expert flyer and look up your flight to see the real reason for the delay.
Today’s available AI can’t tell you “behind the scenes” things like “The lav service vehicle is broken, and we need to get the lavs serviced before we depart. Maintenance says it will take 30 minutes to fix the vehicle” or “The inbound crew who were working your flight just diverted to OKC, and we are reassigning a different crew to your flight that lands from Phoenix in 20 minutes”.
Sources like Expert Flyer, Flightaware, etc. that use publicly sourced data cannot provide the insight that a company-provided AI (with access to the internal data) can. If done right, this could be much better.
UA passengers certainly don’t want to be late, and Scott Kirby & Co. naturally don’t want to be seen as outdated when it comes to AI… That’s perfectly understandable!
Lufthansa needs this service badly.
I’m a simple man. I see AI generated output, I never take it at face value.
Your flight from Londres to Czechoslovakia on June 31 has been rescheduled from 9:00pm to 4:30am on the following June 32 due to late arrival of the aircraft from the Principality of Narnia. Good on you for checking up on your flight, you gorgeous go-getter you! Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Typical corporate idiocy.
Some MBA nimrod has figured out they can fire a few employees who spend time doing this (employees who actually know what they’re doing because they’ve been doing it for years and know what goes wrong). Replace them with a script and United saves .000000000000000000000000000000003% of their annual budget. Brilliant. What could possibly go wrong?
Sincere question: in the age of AI, which appears to be driven completely by the overwhelming urge to reduce headcount to the exclusion of any other consideration, why do corporations need CEOs? AI should be able to replace them easily. No?
At this point, CEOs exist solely to promote AI. They can’t be replaced by AI because even AI isn’t stupid enough to rely on AI for everything.
Wasn’t the Pope critical of AI these days? Do they want a Chicago-based Pope messing up with O’Hare?