United Airlines now texts customers flying in the USA links to local, live radar maps during weather delays, in an effort to give travellers as much real-time information as possible about their trip, especially if things don’t go as planned.

For the past few years, the airline has used specialised customer service teams to write and send text messages to customers that give near-instantaneous details about a given flight – everything from gate changes and boarding times to more specifics regarding aircraft swaps, crew rescheduling and weather events.

Now, the teams, who sit in the network operations centre alongside the flight operations teams, use generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tools to assist in giving more travellers real-time updates during flight delays. The AI is used to review flight data and write customer text & email messages that tell the complete story of a flight change and the reasons behind it.

During weather events, messages will now include links to local, live radar maps showing weather details across flight paths. This helps customers better understand weather-related delays, especially when weather in one part of the country impacts a flight elsewhere. United also displays radar maps in the gate area when a flight has been delayed due to weather.

United customers don’t have to experience a flight change to see the maps. Passengers on all flights can access links to weather maps in the United app under flight status updates.