In the years since Covid-19 shutdowns, travel brands have been investing in AI-powered customer service and touting its efficiencies and cost savings. Now, the Middle East airspace crisis is revealing the gap between marketing and customer reality.
Travelers face hours-long queues, days-long delays in rebooking, and scrambles for support as overwhelmed service teams struggle to keep up.
At this point in time, AI is off the radar when chatbots and agent tools can actually help. Crisis policies and customer directives barely mention the technology. Instead, they are sending people to human agents during the worst disruption to air travel since the pandemic.
When the United States and Israel began military strikes against Iran on February 28, airspace closures across the region resulted in the cancellation of more than 43,000 of some 78,500 scheduled flights, according to Cirium data provided to Skift.
The company's latest calculations
