Airport Disruption Recovery - Self-Servi

Airport Disruption Recovery Self-Service CX Design

CONTEXT AND ROLE

Confidential Case Study (Under NDA)

This project was executed by Tuncarp under a white-label agreement with a London-based digital consultancy for an international European carrier. Proprietary branding, live flight data, and specific airport identifiers have been masked or generalized to comply with non-disclosure agreements.

Client Model: White-labeled delivery via a UK agency for a European airline partner operating across major UK/EU hubs.
My Role: Head of Product & Experience Design at Tuncarp.
Team Scope: Led a 4-person design squad (1 CX/Service Designer, 1 Lead UX/UI Designer, 1 Content Strategist, 1 Design Systems Specialist) collaborating with the UK agency's Product Owner and Solution Architect.
Timeline: 12 weeks.

When international flights experienced severe delays, gate changes, or missed bag connections at transit hubs, two major operational breakdowns occurred:

1. Physical Congestion & Long Queues: Distressed passengers immediately flooded ground staff at service desks to ask about meal/hotel vouchers, rebooking, or lost checked bags.

2. Fragmented & Passive Digital Alerts: Passengers received generic SMS notifications ("Flight Delayed" or "Baggage Delayed") with no actionable next steps, forcing everyone to seek human assistance for basic resolution.

BUSINESS & CX PROBLEM

CORE CX OBJECTIVES

Instant self service

Reduce service-desk congestion

Turn failure into clear communication

Let delayed passengers lodge a baggage claim or receive a compensation/meal voucher directly.

Shift routine, repetitive recovery tasks away from overwhelmed counter staff into lightweight digital workflows.

Design a transparent, stress-reducing recovery journey for high-anxiety travel moments.

As Head of Product & Experience Design, I set the CX strategy and led a four-person design squad through discovery, service design, and delivery, while acting as the design liaison between the agency's Product Owner/Solution Architect and the airline's operational stakeholders. My focus areas:

Reframing the problem from "better notifications" to a self-service operational shift, moving resolution work off the counter entirely.
Mapping the full service blueprint so digital design decisions stayed grounded in backend system realities (baggage tracing, voucher issuance, ground-staff tooling).
Ensuring the experience worked under real airport conditions, low bandwidth, no app download, distressed and time-pressed users.

MY ROLE

SERVICE BLUEPRINT FOR RECOVERY

Rather than designing a single screen, we mapped the entire recovery journey as a service blueprint , passenger touchpoints (frontstage) against the systems and ground-staff actions that had to fire behind the scenes (backstage) for the experience to actually work.

Frontstage - what the passenger sees:

A contextual push/SMS triggers the moment a delay or baggage issue is detected - "Your flight to London is delayed 3h. Tap to claim your meal voucher."
A lightweight mobile web app, no app download, opened via link or a gate QR code.
Real-time status steppers for both flight and baggage, replacing the need to call or queue for an update.

Backstage - what makes it possible:

Integration with baggage-handling systems (WorldTracer) to auto-detect misconnected bags on arrival.
Integration with the airline's delay/voucher APIs to auto-issue digital QR vouchers once a delay threshold is crossed.
A ground-staff tablet portal so desk agents can see self-service claims in real time and step in to override exceptions.

KEY WORKFLOWS

The blueprint translated into two concrete recovery flows, each designed to resolve in a handful of taps.

Digital delayed-baggage recovery

A pre-filled express claim pulls the passenger's booking reference and flight segment automatically; they just confirm the bag (visual selector) and delivery address.
A live delivery timeline (Bag Located → On Next Available Flight → Out for Local Delivery) replaces the need to call support.

Delayed-flight voucher & rebooking

Instant meal/beverage vouchers generate a dynamic QR code, redeemable at participating airport merchants.
For minor disruptions, passengers can self-select an alternative flight time from a curated list, no gate-desk queue required.

KEY DELIVERABLES

End-to-end service blueprint mapping passenger emotional states, physical touchpoints, digital interactions, and backend API triggers.
Responsive passenger self-service micro-app (mobile web).
Ground Staff Assistant Portal, iPad/tablet UI for desk agents to monitor and override claims.
A cross-platform component library built for fast loading on low-bandwidth airport Wi-Fi/cellular.
A ground-staff interaction guide, giving agents a clear protocol for directing non-tech-savvy passengers to the gate QR code.

Because delivery was scoped through the agency, ownership of post-launch analytics stayed with the airline. What we controlled was the instrumentation: every touchpoint in the blueprint was designed with a specific, measurable signal attached, so the client's teams could see exactly which design decision was moving a number, not just whether the launch "worked."

KPI INSTRUMENTATION