Aviation has lost the human side of customer service

The progressive slide in global customer satisfaction has come as a wake-up call to most industries.

 

If a business is to get anywhere close to a first class customer experience, most are coming to terms with the co-dependency of human and digital.

 

They know that good AI-enabled automation can resolve customer issues faster than a witch’s broom, but to be effective it needs to be accompanied by personalised human support with instant accountability which can seamlessly kick in the event of something not going the way it was meant to.

 

These businesses know that the true test of their customer experience isn’t when things go right – it’s how their business responds when things go wrong. They know that the modern customer may want things faster, but they also want to feel connected, trusted, inspired and heard.

 

while other industries are chasing the right balance of hi-tech and hi-touch, one industry appears to be moving blindly in the opposite direction. Commercial aviation.

 

Booking a ticket has never been easier, but resolving a crisis has never been harder. Formal consumer complaints submitted to the CAA hit an unprecedented volume of over 43,000 in a recent 12-month reporting block.

 

A CAA study revealed that nearly two-thirds of passengers expressed dissatisfaction with airline communications, with 90% of travellers left in the dark regarding their rights.

 

Consequently, consumer champion Which? ranked the sector as the third-worst for customer service (ahead of utilities and broadband) with nearly four in 10 travellers unable to resolve issues due to phone delays and unresponsive digital tools, prompting waves of escalations against major carriers.

 

There was a time when airlines competed on the quality of their hospitality, but the once gentle art of aviation has been systematically stripped of the personal care and morphed into a transactional survival game dominated by rigid algorithms, hidden fees, hopeless chatbots and digital deflection.

 

The collapse in aviation customer service is largely by design. Airlines have shifted to hyper-automated support models, slashing live agents to protect profit margins, while relying on understaffed ground handlers and rigid AI chatbots that act as "shields" to deflect passenger complaints and delay compensation. 

 

Massive disconnects persist between automated back-end scheduling, live gate data, and the central communication tools pushed to consumers. Passengers find out that their flight has been cancelled via an app alert before gate agents are even notified.

 

Technology has been used, not to enable the customer, but to act as a firewall against accountability, intentionally starving the customer of human contact and forcing them into submission. In my own experience, upgrading your seat to a premium ticket may give you a little more legroom but offers virtually no protection when it comes to service failures or issue resolution.

 

There are standout offenders. One ultra-low-cost carrier generated a staggering 918 escalated complaints per one million passengers. There’s been a noticeable shift of focus in the air as well as on the ground. Historically, cabin crew balanced both safety and passenger well-being, whereas too many flight attendants appear to have been predominantly briefed to act as high altitude enforcers rather than hosts or providers of care.

 

There are fortunately also the outliers. Jet2 consistently wins major awards including the 2026 Customer Satisfaction Award and there are still countless individual cabin crew who still provide some of the best, proactive personal care on the planet.

 

But, overall, the customer has spoken. Flying has officially been downgraded to a utility – ranking just above paying your gas bill and arguing with a broadband provider.

 

The choice for the industry is stark. View customer experience as an expensive cost centre to be minimised, or reinvest in the human and digital infrastructure required.

 

Leverage the AI revolution to handle mundane tasks and kill the pointless chatbots while routing complex issues to skilled operators. while AI excels at automating data and routines, it cannot replace the genuine empathy passengers crave in an increasingly automated world.

 

So leverage the digital efficiencies AI will offer you, to free your ground staff and crews from administrative burdens, allowing the empowered human side of service to focus on listening, caring, and connecting. Stop treating passengers like inventory to be shifted, and start treating them like human beings to be cared for.

 

Reclaim the human heart of airline hospitality or come clean that we are all condemned to a permanent new age of unfriendly skies.