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United Airlines has long had one of the best airline apps and provides some of the best updates throughout your travel with the carrier. It will now text customers links to local, live radar maps when flights are facing weather delays. Generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) is now being used to keep travelers informed and it’s pretty impressive.
For the past few years, United has used dedicated customer service teams to send text messages to passengers. These provide near-instantaneous details about their flight including gate changes, boarding times, aircraft swaps, crew rescheduling, weather events, and more. These teams are now being augmented with generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tools to give more travelers real-time updates when travel goes sideways.
Real-time radar maps will provide passengers with full details around how inclement weather in one part of the country can impact a flight in another. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard passengers complain during a delay that “the weather outside looks fine.” United is the first and only US airline to provide specific messages.
Jason Birnbaum, United’s Chief Information Officer, said:
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. 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.”
The release of this new feature comes this week as United expects its busiest Fourth of July holiday on record with more than five million passengers flying between June 28th and July 8th (up more than 7% compared to 2023). Here is how United describes the new technology working:
Specialized customer service teams sit in the network operations center alongside the flight operations teams and tap gen AI to review flight data and write customer messages that tells the complete story of a flight change. These messages are sent to customers through text or email in an effort to provide more helpful and relevant information about why flight plans are changing.
During weather events, messages will include links to local, live radar maps showing weather details across flight paths. This helps customers stay informed on weather-related delays, including showing how weather in one part of the country can impact a flight elsewhere. Plus, customers on all flights can access links to weather maps in the United app under flight status updates, and United displays radar maps in the gate area when a flight has been delayed due to weather.”
Anthony’s Take: I criticize United quite a bit, but the airline deserves kudos for its impressive customer app and early adoption of emerging technologies.
(Image Credits: United Airlines.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
