SMOOTH LANDINGS

Airlines are adopting new technology to help alleviate the stress around airline disruptions, writes Linda Fox

All corporate travellers will have suffered them at one time or another, be it because of weather events, tech problems or something else, but flight delays are a bind whatever form they take.

One airline taking action is Cathay Pacific, which began looking at how it might mitigate the disruption caused by typhoons in its home region. The airline says it wanted to take a customer-centric approach to something that can impact as many as 100,000 passengers if flights have to be cancelled for one day.

Josh Rogers, Head of Airport Customer Service at Cathay Pacific, says the airline dealt with 31 typhoon-related events last year alone. Speaking at the Amadeus Airline Executive Summit, held in Istanbul in June, he said the carrier opted for a “designthinking approach” by asking itself questions around how it can improve the experience for passengers, employees and the airline’s operations.

What Cathay ended up with was a threepronged solution, with Amadeus Passenger Recovery technology used to optimise how disruptions are handled, 15Below used for communications, and a chatbot tool called Vera developed with Accenture to help passengers rebook their flights.

With this technology in place, the hope is that when a typhoon is expected, the airline can plan ahead more effectively.

For example, customers on non-essential travel have the opportunity to change their plans ahead of time and will receive an email with options and a link to the chatbot. The chatbot is then able to rebook their preferred flight in four steps.

In the aftermath of disruption, the airline is hoping that the same four steps to book will prevent the chaotic scenes at the airport that have made media headlines in the past.

The airline has so far trialled the solution, with all passengers on a cancelled Hong

We want to mobilise our agents and give them the tools because a lot of the time the passenger knows more about the status of a flight than the employee”

Kong to Shanghai flight rebooked within six to eight minutes. Scenarios are already being run for when typhoon season hits.

The next step is to work with Amadeus to use the Vera chatbot to help with rebooking passengers that booked via a travel agency or other third party, rather than direct.

Lufthansa, however, says that it has no email or contact details for about 20% of its passengers and hopes that it can address this challenge, as well as handle disruption more effectively, by equipping its staff with the Amadeus Airport Companion application.

Ultimately, the airline’s vision is to remove counters and check-in desks and have roaming staff at its airports with the app able to check them in, handle transfers in a disruption and sell ancillaries, among other various duties.

Initially, however, the app is focused on helping Lufthansa’s passengers during disruption.

Also speaking at the Amadeus event, Vicky Scherber, Senior Director of Passenger and Baggage Processes for Lufthansa Group, said: “In ten years time there will be less desks and counters. We want to mobilise our agents to give them the tools because a lot of the time the passenger knows more about the status of a flight than the employee, so we really need to enable the colleague to make a positive impact.”

Scherber added that some education is also required, with the airline discovering in tests that between 50% and 70% of passengers queueing at a service desk have already been rebooked.