StandBy

One flat path to a human, no matter who's stranded

When a flight is cancelled or a connection is missed, airlines default travelers into self-service tools — apps, chatbots, automated rebooking — built for the average case. But the people hit hardest by disruptions are rarely average cases: a parent traveling alone with an infant, an elderly passenger navigating an unfamiliar airport, a disabled traveler whose accommodation needs to be reissued, someone who doesn't speak the local language. For these travelers, "no human available" isn't an inconvenience — it can mean missed medication, an unsafe overnight stranding, or a rebooking that ignores an accessibility need entirely.

Airline self-service support treats all disruptions as equally solvable by automation. In practice, disruption severity and traveler vulnerability vary enormously, but current systems apply one flat, low-priority path to a human agent regardless of context — leaving the travelers with the least capacity to self-serve waiting the longest.

Where this stands

StandBy is in active research and flow design. The core of the work is a triage layer that scores disruption severity and traveler vulnerability so higher-need travelers are routed to a human faster, while lower-need cases stay in self-service — that scoring logic and the resulting rebooking flows are being mapped out in Figma now.