Rebooking, refunds and agency desks: the first AI agents for airlines

18 October 2026
Arcsen

When a flight is cancelled, the contact centre hears the same questions from everyone booked on it: what are my options, where is my refund, where is my bag, will I be compensated. They arrive together, on WhatsApp, in the app and by phone, in Arabic and English. Most answers already sit in the passenger service system (PSS) and in published policy. A few need a person’s judgement, and passengers remember those.

Our guide to passenger CRM on Salesforce set out the records an airline needs. This one picks the first Agentforce agents to build on them, what each needs, where a person stays in charge, and how to test them.

Four agents worth building first

Disruption options. A verified passenger asks on WhatsApp, web chat or in the app what happens now. The agent reads the live flight status and the rebooking and refund options the PSS offers for that booking, explains them, and books the one the passenger picks where the PSS allows it.
Refund and baggage claim status. The agent finds the refund or baggage case, reports its status from revenue accounting or baggage tracing, and adds new details, such as a delivery address for a delayed bag. It approves nothing.
Travel agent and corporate desk. On the agency portal, signed-in agents and corporate travel managers ask about group requests, quotes, agreements and open cases. The agent answers from what their account may see, and opens a case for the rest.
Contact-centre assist. Before a rep takes a conversation, an employee agent summarizes the passenger’s cases, trips, loyalty tier, language and past compensation, and drafts a reply for the rep to send. The standard Summarize Record action covers one record at a time and does not read Data 360, so a summary across cases, trips and loyalty needs its own prompt template in Prompt Builder.

Salesforce’s story on Finnair shows the pattern. Its agent, Sisu, answers on the website and app in English and Finnish, drawing on Service Cloud, Amadeus reservations and loyalty data in Data 360. Salesforce reports that 80% of customer service questions in chat are now resolved by AI agents, and cases that need a person reach the rep with the flight details and policies already gathered.

Agent	Channel	Data and systems it needs	Actions it may take	Where a person takes over
Disruption options	WhatsApp, web chat, app	Live status and offered options from the PSS; policy articles	Explain options; rebook onto an offered flight; open a case	Fare differences, waivers, groups, special assistance, compensation
Refund and baggage status	WhatsApp, web chat, app	Cases; refund status from revenue accounting; tracing status	Report status; add details; open a claim	Refunds outside policy, expenses, lost or damaged bags
Agency and corporate desk	Agency portal, after sign-in	Accounts, agreements, quotes, group requests, cases	Report status; share permitted documents; open a case	Group pricing, fare exceptions, agreement terms, debit memos
Contact-centre assist	Service Console	Cases, passenger record, PSS trips, loyalty, knowledge	Summarize; draft replies; suggest articles	Every decision and every reply sent

What the agents need

Live answers from the PSS. Actions call the PSS through your integration layer, such as MuleSoft, and return only the fields an answer needs. Read status on every question: Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) requires carriers to update flight status and any further delay every 30 minutes, so a copy taken at the start of a chat goes stale.
Identity before anything personal. Salesforce’s customer verification emails a one-time code, records the result in variables, and lets filters lock subagents (Salesforce’s current name for topics) with private actions until the code matches. Airlines identify bookings by reference and surname, and the verification flows can be overridden, so let the PSS confirm the pair and pass the verified booking to every action.
Knowledge in both languages, one owner per rule. Salesforce’s multi-language guide says the retriever filters out articles whose language does not match the conversation, and uploaded files answer in their original language: an English baggage PDF gives Arabic speakers English answers. Keep each rule as Arabic and English Knowledge articles owned by the team that sets it, from operations for disruption to legal for passenger rights, in line with the travel alerts in our guide to airline websites on SitecoreAI.
Action results in the session’s language. Content returned by actions stays in the end-user language set when the chat starts, so set it from the pre-chat form and have actions return codes, times and amounts for the agent to word.

Guardrails and handover

An agent hands over only through its Escalation subagent, which passes the conversation, with the messages and details gathered, to a queue or rep through an outbound Omni-Channel flow. It tries once per session. For disruption days, add the Check Availability for Routing element to the flow to see rep availability and wait time, and when nobody is free, have the agent create a case with the Create Case with Enhanced Data action so a person follows up.

Saudi Arabia’s passenger rights rules have been in force since 20 November 2023, and GACA says passengers without an adequate response within seven days can ask it to investigate, so give complaint cases a seven-day milestone and an owner. GACA’s guide to flight delays sets compensation of 50 Special Drawing Rights for a delay of three to six hours and 150 beyond six, and lets a passenger delayed over two hours ask to end the contract for a full refund of the ticket price. The agent can explain these rules from an approved article. Entitlement turns on facts it cannot judge, such as the cause of a delay, so a person decides.

What stays with people. Compensation and any payment under passenger rights rules, and who is entitled. Waivers, fare differences and exceptions to policy. Refunds outside policy, expenses and settlements for lost or damaged bags. Medical clearance and special assistance. The outcome of every complaint. Group pricing, agency terms and debit memo disputes. The agent explains, gathers the facts and hands over; people decide.

Testing and measuring, before and after launch

Salesforce’s Testing Center generates test cases from an agent’s subagents, actions or knowledge, accepts uploaded test sets, and scores batch runs on measures such as completeness, coherence, conciseness, latency and instruction adherence. Salesforce says to use it only in a sandbox, because tests can change CRM data, so connect the sandbox to a PSS test environment. The newer Testing Center in Agentforce Studio is labelled Beta.

Arabic is labelled Beta for service and employee agents on Salesforce’s language support page, so build tests from real messages in Gulf and Egyptian Arabic, English and both mixed, with flight numbers and dates typed as passengers type them. Agents cannot escalate inside Agentforce Builder, so test handovers on a real test channel, then rehearse one cancelled flight end to end.

After launch, Agentforce Observability traces each session down to the subagent and turn, clusters conversations by intent and scores their quality. Measure by language, against your own baseline: containment, handover quality (did the rep have to ask again?), complaints about the agent and repeat contacts on the same booking.

Our work with airlines

Our airline work sits in the records agents read. With Air Cairo, we are building passenger CRM on Service Cloud and Sales Cloud: one passenger record, service as cases, in Arabic and English, under a public agreement. EgyptAir, Egypt’s flag carrier flying to 93 destinations, is rebuilding its digital front door and passenger CRM with Arcsen. Qatar Airways has a supplier portal on Experience Cloud for invoices, payments and documents, with Service Cloud cases, Einstein Bots and in-app messaging. Air Arabia runs its corporate and charter pipeline on Sales Cloud, with one-click branded quotes to travel agents.

Where to start

Pick one disruption and one channel, such as same-day cancellations on WhatsApp, and list the PSS options and the cases for people.
Settle verification: the identifiers, how the PSS confirms them, and what the agent may show.
Write the articles in pairs, Arabic and English, each with an owner, and legal sign-off on passenger rights.
Test in a sandbox with real transcripts, and rehearse a cancelled flight.
Launch with a staffed escalation queue, and review traces and handovers weekly.

Planning an agent for passengers or travel agents? The free Agentforce Readiness Assessment takes ten working days: it picks three use cases, checks the data and permissions they need, and gives you a costed pilot plan. See our travel and transportation work, or talk to our travel and transportation team.

Frequently asked questions

Can an Agentforce agent rebook passengers after a cancellation?

Yes, within limits you set. Through an action that calls the PSS, it can offer the options the PSS returns and book the one the passenger picks. Fare differences, waivers and groups go to a person.

Can an AI agent decide compensation under GACA rules?

No. It can explain the published rules from an approved article. Entitlement depends on the facts of each delay, so a person decides and arranges any payment.

Does Agentforce support Arabic for airline passengers?

Yes, labelled Beta for service and employee agents. Knowledge articles are filtered by language, so every policy a passenger may ask about needs an Arabic article.

What happens when no person is free to take over?

The agent tries the transfer once per session. If a routing check in the Omni-Channel flow finds no rep available, the agent can create a case for a person to follow up.