A single late aircraft can ripple through a day: missed connections, crew running out of hours and a contact centre under pressure. The operations control centre recovers by pulling information from several systems and working the phones. The work is skilled, but much of it is assembly — gathering the constraints, listing the options and working out who is affected.
Where agents help, and where they must not decide
We design disruption squads around a simple split. Agents observe, assemble and draft; licensed and accountable people decide. An early-warning agent watches movements, weather and rotations. A recovery planner ranks swaps, delays and cancellations by cost and passenger impact and shows the constraint behind each one. A crew legality checker explains whether a proposed change breaks duty or rest rules. None of them acts on the operation.
- Observe. Disruption early warning and turnaround tracking.
- Suggest. Ranked recovery options and crew legality checks for the duty manager.
- Act within limits. Re-accommodating passengers in the same cabin and within policy.
- Act with approval. Refunds and compensation above a set limit.
The passenger side is a compliance process
Once a flight is cancelled or badly delayed, passenger-rights rules apply. In the EU, Regulation 261/2004 sets out assistance, re-routing, refund and compensation obligations1. An agent can check eligibility against the fare and the disruption record and draft the decision, but the evidence trail matters as much as the speed. Every draft should keep the rule it applied and the data it used.