Flight bots to provide status updates for domestic air travel in India via social media

Vadodara-based Phonon announces the launch of India’s first multi-modal flight bot for the aviation sector.

Phonon’s chatbot deployment uses enhanced artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to provide instant responses to simple queries raised by passengers. The advanced speech-based Natural Language Processing system that works in English is capable of understanding queries in various Indian accents as well. The text-based bots on Facebook and Twitter can respond to questions asked in various Indian languages as well.

According to Lili Cheng, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft in the AI division and leader of the Bot Framework team in an upcoming episode of Decoded, “We really know that no matter where you work, a lot of what you do is just conversation, right? And so, how can you make these everyday tasks easier to use?”

Since bots are conversational tools that interact with the user by bringing the best information forward, it is no wonder that they are now being used in the aviation industry to give updates on flight statuses, making these “everyday tasks easier to use,” as Cheng says.

Phonon’s multi-modal flight bot, aptly named, Trixie, in its first version is geared to provide flight status for any domestic flight in India over Facebook, Twitter and through voice-recognition based speech platform.

The flight status bot is available on Facebook at www.facebook.com/trixie22north/ and on Twitter handle @22n_phonon or page at www.twitter.com/22N_phonon. The caller may also call into +91 9978 74 6666 to know their flight status by just speaking out the airline and flight number to experience Phonon’s speech recognition based flight status bot.

“Trixie, our automated flight status bot, is a point of inflection in delivering information at your fingertips. Machine learning and automation have opened up tremendous possibilities in the customer servicing industry. Phonon has an impressive array of customer service automation applications lined up for launch through this quarter. The applications will focus on travel, banking, financial services and insurance,” said Ujwal Makhija, CEO at Phonon Communications.

The entirely bootstrapped startup already has tie-ups with some of the major airlines even as more collaboration is expected. According to Vijay Mannur, AVP – Sales at Phonon, currently more than 60 per cent of India’s flyers get flight reschedule intimations through Phonon’s multicast service.