You are settling into your window seat, bound for a summer vacation, when the flight attendant wishes you a happy birthday or commiserates about the lousy weather that delayed the last leg of your trip.
It might feel like the flight crew has been scouring your recent social media posts, but at some airlines, that wouldn't be necessary.
Carriers such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines are giving gate agents and flight attendants access to more customer data in hopes of giving passengers more personalized service.
Still, there is only so much a birthday greeting can do to make up for a lost bag or late arrival, particularly when airlines want to steer clear of conversations that feel too personal. While in-cabin recognition might be the most visible way airlines are working to do more with the troves of data they collect, behind-the-scenes efforts to mine stats on everything from collisions between airport vehicles to turbulence touch almost every piece of a passenger's trip.
Most of the data they are working with is the sort of information airlines have long collected. And there's no shortage: a Boeing 787 generates half a terabyte of information per flight, said John "JJ" DeGiovanni, a managing director with United's corporate safety team. The challenge is figuring out how to use it in ways that are meaningful for the airline and its passengers.
When it comes to personalized service, just how meaningful today's programs are depends on whom you ask.
Jay Sorensen, president of airline-consulting firm IdeaWorks, said he's skeptical that employees would have the right kind of information — or the time — to add real value for fliers, outside of a handful of cases, like helping passengers at risk of missing a connecting flight get off the plane first. Even if an airline could anticipate your drink order, placing it isn't a strenuous task, he said, and flight attendants have other tasks to juggle.
"In coach, it's just not going to happen," Sorensen said.