Airlines and Travel
Where recovery succeeds or fails is decided in the handoffs and not in the schedule.
Airline and travel operations are built around tightly coupled, time-critical workflows. Schedules, fleets, crews, maintenance, regulatory constraints, and passenger communication are interdependent by design. When one element shifts, the effects ripple immediately across the operation.
For teams working in this environment, disruption is not an exception. Weather, airspace constraints, technical issues, crew availability, and downstream network effects regularly push operations out of plan. Normal operations transition into recovery mode frequently.
What differentiates resilient organisations is not whether disruption occurs, but how reliably coordination is maintained once it does.
Related Resources
Explore connected blog and comparison pages for this industry topic.
The Challenges
Where coordination breaks under pressure
Operational breakdowns in aviation rarely stem from a lack of systems or tools. They occur when recovery workflows stretch across time, channels, and teams without a shared, persistent state.
A passenger may receive automated notifications, attempt self-service rebooking, speak to an agent, and follow up later through another channel. Each interaction is captured somewhere, but the case itself often lacks a single, authoritative view of what has already been decided, which actions remain valid, and what must happen next.
During disruption events, this fragmentation accelerates. Availability changes rapidly. Policies are reinterpreted. Actions taken earlier may no longer apply. Agents spend time reconstructing context instead of resolving cases, while passengers receive information that varies depending on who they speak to and when.
From the outside, this appears as inconsistent communication. Internally, it is a breakdown of workflow continuity.
Recovery work consumes capacity faster than it scales
When predefined processes or automation cannot complete a case, recovery work takes over. Manual rebooking, voucher handling, document correction, and policy clarification move across calls, messages, and back-office coordination.
Individually, these tasks are manageable. At scale, they absorb disproportionate operational capacity. Recovery effort is difficult to forecast, hard to standardise, and expensive to scale, particularly during peak disruption periods, when staffing flexibility is already constrained.
As a result, highly trained teams spend increasing amounts of time compensating for fragmentation rather than progressing resolution.
Automation helps until it fragments execution
Airlines have invested heavily in self-service tools, automated notifications, and digital rebooking flows. These systems perform well when scenarios remain within expected boundaries.
Disruption rarely does.
Once a case crosses policy thresholds, requires judgment, or unfolds across multiple interactions, automation typically stops at the channel edge. The workflow is handed to humans without preserved context. Agents must reconstruct decisions, validate earlier actions, and realign expectations before progress can continue.
At that point, automation may have reduced inbound volume, but it has not reduced execution effort. The work has simply shifted downstream, often becoming harder to control.
Where Elba Fits
Elba fits into airline and travel operations as an agentic AI workforce designed to coordinate recovery workflows across channels, systems, and time.
She is not another customer-facing interface or scripted automation. Elba operates as a set of autonomous, goal-oriented agents that actively manage the progression of recovery cases. Her role is to preserve intent, context, and state as interactions move in real time between voice, messaging, email, apps, and other digital channels.
In practice, Elba turns fragmented passenger interactions into a single, continuously managed case. Passenger information, preferences, confirmations, and constraints are collected once and remain attached to the workflow as it evolves. Rebooking requests, voucher delivery, document handling, and follow-up communication are coordinated in real time, regardless of which channel the passenger uses next.
Because Elba works omnichannel by design, passengers can move fluidly between channels without losing progress or receiving contradictory information. A system generated update sent via SMS is consistent with what is said on a call with an agent. A change confirmed in an online chat is reflected immediately in subsequent interactions. Coordination happens across channels, not within them.
Elba connects passenger communication directly to operational systems, allowing recovery actions to be triggered as part of the interaction itself rather than deferred to downstream coordination. Human teams receive cases with preserved context, clear decisions, and explicit next steps, instead of fragmented requests that must be reconstructed under pressure.
Just as importantly, Elba maintains continuous communication throughout recovery. Passengers are kept informed in real time as conditions change, reducing uncertainty, repeat contact, and escalation during already stressful situations.
Elba does not replace reservation systems, inventory management, or operational control platforms. She acts as a connective workforce that allows those systems and the humans operating them to function as a coordinated whole during disruption.
How This Benefits the Organisation
Customer perception is shaped less by punctuality than by how disruption is handled once it occurs
When execution continuity is preserved during recovery, passengers experience clarity instead of confusion
Passengers receive consistent information, understand what options are available to them, and are not forced to restart the conversation every time conditions change
Agents and operations teams no longer lose time reconstructing what has already been attempted, confirmed, or declined
Decisions remain visible, constraints are explicit, recovery actions build on one another instead of resetting
Organisations that preserve continuity absorb surge volume without linear growth in headcount because work progresses rather than circulates
Reduced repeat contact, fewer abandoned recovery attempts, and less manual rework lower the cost of disruption handling over time
Consistent execution reduces the number of moments that turn into public failures, protecting brand trust
Why This Context Matters
In aviation and travel, coordination failures have immediate and cascading effects. Delays propagate, contact volumes surge, and recovery costs escalate quickly. As networks operate with high utilisation and limited slack, resilience depends less on adding capacity and more on reducing fragmentation.
Organisations that preserve continuity across recovery workflows contain disruption without continually increasing headcount. Those that do not are forced to compensate with growing amounts of manual effort with predictable consequences for cost, service stability, and operational risk.
Against this backdrop, the value of coordinated, end-to-end execution becomes clear.
Ready to see Elba in action?
Experience how Elba coordinates execution across your workflows.