[00:00:00] Have you ever wondered how one of the world's largest airlines ensures that every passenger
[00:00:06] interaction is seamless? And by that I mean both on the ground and in the air. Well today
[00:00:14] I'm going to be joined by Dan Field, Director of Platform and Network Engineering at United
[00:00:20] Airlines. And Dan has a rich history with integrating cutting edge technology to enhance
[00:00:26] customer experiences and operational efficiency at United. And with his expertise, United has
[00:00:32] harnessed tools such as Cisco's AppDynamics and developed innovative solutions such as
[00:00:38] Agent on Demand to revolutionise the way that we travel. And the Agent on Demand service eliminates
[00:00:44] the need to physically wait in line, offering a more convenient option to address travel-related
[00:00:49] queries like seat assignments, boarding times and so much more. And the platform is accessible
[00:00:56] by simply scanning a QR code. But as listeners of this podcast know, I'm driven by learning
[00:01:03] about the technology that drives businesses forward, and especially areas that you don't
[00:01:08] associate with technology. So I am particularly excited about getting Dan on the podcast today
[00:01:15] to talk about how United Airlines is leveraging technology to make a real difference to their
[00:01:21] organisation and indeed their customers. So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the
[00:01:29] way to the show floor here at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, where you can join me and Dan in conversation today.
[00:01:37] So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are
[00:01:42] and what you do? Yeah, my name is Dan Field. I'm with United Airlines. I've been with them a little
[00:01:48] over six years. My responsibility is platform and network engineering, which encompasses a lot of
[00:01:55] different things within an airline from plane communications to airport communications to
[00:02:02] data centres, service centre communications. And right here at Cisco Live, I know you've covered
[00:02:07] a lot of ground running around the show floor, etc. I've got to say, what excites you about Cisco Live?
[00:02:13] Is it your first event and what have you enjoyed so far? Yeah, this is my first time. So I've been
[00:02:18] using Cisco for over 30 years and this is my first time I've come to Cisco Live. What really
[00:02:24] excites me about it is how they're going into the full observability side of the world and
[00:02:31] the Splunk acquisition. It's gonna really change a lot of things. That way we can start
[00:02:36] bringing in AI, generative AI, start using it and versus being reactive. I think we can get more
[00:02:43] into a proactive resolving problems and improving our customer experience. Well, one of the things
[00:02:49] I try and do on this Daily Tech Podcast is getting people and business leaders thinking differently
[00:02:54] about areas that technology impacts it and often areas that you don't associate with technology.
[00:02:59] And although all your aircraft are going to be full of technology, many passengers won't
[00:03:03] automatically think about some of the challenges that go with that. And I'd love to
[00:03:07] start with some stats here that I was reading before you came on the podcast. United Airlines
[00:03:11] is now the largest airline in the world with over 293 billion available seat miles. So how
[00:03:18] has this immense scale influenced your technology strategy, particularly in terms of managing and
[00:03:24] optimizing such a vast and complex network? Yeah, so just to give you another little stat, we've got
[00:03:30] 500 airplanes on order. So we're adding more to the fleet. So those air miles or seat miles are
[00:03:36] gonna get bigger. And we're having to account from an IT standpoint, these are absolutely a flying
[00:03:43] data center. So it's offloading performance data, it's offloading movies, things like that on a
[00:03:48] plane. So getting the tech in there right so that we can actually get all that offloaded and unloaded
[00:03:55] before the plane takes off. Wow, incredible. So just to set the scene for our conversation today,
[00:04:02] can you share your United Airlines tech journey with Cisco, I think in particular, AppDynamics,
[00:04:08] and any challenges or problems you were able to solve with technology as well? Yeah, so listen,
[00:04:14] when you think about AppDynamics, and we also use ThousandEyes, so kind of a suite of the tools,
[00:04:21] we just deployed what we call agent on demand. So we call it AOD in short. And what this is,
[00:04:27] is the problem that we were trying to solve was if you think about our entire fleet across the world,
[00:04:36] and there's areas within the world where weather hits, a weather event hits, or we have a mechanical
[00:04:42] problem. Well, if you think about a CSR, a customer service agent sitting there, there's 100 plus
[00:04:50] people coming off saying, where do I go next? What do I get to do? And what they do, so there's
[00:04:58] a big long line. So our customers get really frustrated, they have to sit there and wait in line
[00:05:05] for each person to either get rebooked or go to a hotel or where is their luggage? So how do we
[00:05:12] solve for that? So that's where agent on demand came about, is to say we can use, it might be
[00:05:20] blue skies in San Francisco, and we're canceling all kinds of flights in EWR. Well, why can't I use
[00:05:26] all the Denver, San Francisco, LAX, Chicago, all those different reps to help solve for all those
[00:05:35] flights that we canceled for our customers? And that kind of resonated because we're measured
[00:05:41] on NPS, so that's net promoter score. And that is giving our customers, how do they
[00:05:49] grade us on the service that we're trying to provide? And that's what really drove it. We had
[00:05:56] that feedback from them about the long lines, they'd go into a queue waiting on a reservation rep
[00:06:03] to get on the phone. They were sitting in queue for an hour, two hours, sitting at the airport.
[00:06:08] They knew they couldn't get on another flight, they should already been in another hotel. So
[00:06:12] how do we solve for that day of travel really quick? Keep the queues down low within res,
[00:06:18] and then let all the airport operations solve those customer problems. So what that brought
[00:06:26] about for the full observability is this is where AppD and ThousandEyes comes into play. So if you
[00:06:33] look at that very complicated infrastructure, I've got AWS, I've got WebEx technology, and then I have
[00:06:41] my on-prem voice environment that I've got to manage and monitor all that. And that's where
[00:06:48] AppDynamics really comes into play because it really is looking at that on-prem stuff.
[00:06:53] But in ThousandEyes, I can look into AWS, we're using Upstreamworks, they created the
[00:07:00] soft phone for us and everything so I can see if they're having issues. And then with ThousandEyes
[00:07:06] because it does such crowdsourcing, I can see the end user's cell phone. And in that area,
[00:07:13] we can see that they're having issues with their cell phone so the agent can say,
[00:07:18] why don't we move to chat? I'll still solve your problem through chat but it looks like you're
[00:07:22] having bad cell phone service within the airport. Wow, that's incredibly cool. And just to further
[00:07:30] bring to life what you're talking about there, are there any other examples of the importance of
[00:07:35] the digital experience for United and how observability is increasingly playing a role
[00:07:41] in that? Yeah, so if you really look at our business, it's really the technology as a whole
[00:07:49] is enabling the business to drive that excellent service to the customer. And that's where our CEO
[00:07:56] comes into play. He's basically pushing us versus being regular airline, let's fit the passenger
[00:08:04] into an airline process, let's take that process and fit it into the customer and let's get more
[00:08:10] customer focused. So what that does is that really drives technology, how can we put technology
[00:08:17] in our business hands so that they can provide that excellent service? And that end-to-end
[00:08:22] visibility is key because MTTR has to be resolved. Our chief people officer, she says 30 minutes,
[00:08:31] the business is impacted and the customer is frustrated. So get it solved. So that's what
[00:08:36] we got. And for anyone listening who's unfamiliar with this, can you tell me a little bit more about
[00:08:41] agent on demand and why that is an important part of your entire customer experience as well? Yeah,
[00:08:46] that's the, and that's just kind of feedback from the customers giving the day of travel, it's really
[00:08:52] focused on day of travel. So if you're two days out, you're going to go to reservation and we'll
[00:08:57] solve the problem through reservation. But the day of travel, that's what agent on demand really
[00:09:02] brings because now that puts a airport agent directly to the customer and they don't no longer
[00:09:09] have to stand in a service line or stand at the podium waiting on to get solved by the customer
[00:09:15] or the CSR. They now can just walk up to it, hit QR code and now they'll get a airport agent across
[00:09:23] our entire fleet. Are there any specific instances or examples or even use case that you're able to
[00:09:30] share where observability has come into play with agent on demand as well? Yeah, so as any system,
[00:09:36] right, we've had impact. And we knew that within AWS, AWS was having some issues. So we knew that
[00:09:46] the voice or the video we were going to have customers couldn't get in on video. So we
[00:09:52] transitioned the agents on the calls that were having trouble with video transition on to chat
[00:09:57] and then they started communicating across the fleet. When you come in, come into a chat queue,
[00:10:03] don't let's just shut off the video queue until we got the problem resolved. And we found that with
[00:10:09] Thousand Eyes and AppD coming into play. So that was a big one. Wow. And for anybody listening
[00:10:15] anywhere in the world, is there any advice that you'd have for them, especially if they're
[00:10:19] considering implementing or building an observability practice within their own organization?
[00:10:24] You've probably learned a few things along the way. Any advice that you would? Yeah, I would say
[00:10:29] and generally people take the high road in the sense, but I would say when you talk about
[00:10:37] observability, it's a journey. So you're not going to solve it overnight. It's going to take a while.
[00:10:43] So my suggestion is an agent on demand is a perfect example. I mean, it's a very important
[00:10:51] tool for the business so that they can use it and solve our customer problems.
[00:10:56] You take the most difficult thing and just focus on that and get all your tuning and all your
[00:11:03] configurations and everything correct as you're doing it. And it's a life cycle. It'll continue
[00:11:08] to life cycle. So that environment will continue to turn. So you'll continue to tune the alerts
[00:11:16] and thresholds and all that, but it points you directly to the fire. So that's what I would
[00:11:22] focus on is focus on the most difficult or the I would say the application that provides the
[00:11:27] best value to the business and go after that. Fantastic advice. And with United's ambitious
[00:11:33] growth plans and significant technological enhancements, not to mention the investments
[00:11:39] you were telling me about at the beginning of our conversation. And we've also got the
[00:11:43] integration of in-seat screens and advanced connectivity on flights. How do you if we
[00:11:47] zoom out, how do you see these innovations shaping the future customer experience
[00:11:51] and maintaining a competitive edge in the industry? Yeah. So in the airline business,
[00:11:57] one does, others follow. So we always want to try to be the first to the market. So
[00:12:03] I believe technology and the stability of technology is really going to drive that
[00:12:07] competitive edge. Now the big one right now is bags, right? So tracking bags, being able to
[00:12:14] put the customer at ease when they do travel, knowing that their bags are right with them
[00:12:19] and they know when they land, right? So this technology, like you said, eventually will be
[00:12:24] loading on all the seat backs, different types of movies, things like that. So that technology has
[00:12:30] to be in play while ground crew has communications to the ground via, you know, via their, we call
[00:12:36] them map devices, their devices as they walk through and swipe credit card or they don't
[00:12:42] swipe credit cards anymore. But they collect the data and stuff like that through the map device.
[00:12:47] So. Wow. Well, I'd love to stay in touch with you and see how this journey continues to evolve.
[00:12:53] But for anyone listening, wanting to find out more information about the work that you're doing at
[00:12:57] United, I'm not sure if there's anywhere on the website, like a news page or anything like that,
[00:13:02] but is there any way you'd like to point everyone listening that just want to find out more?
[00:13:05] Yeah, the best place to go is united.com. That's where we have all of our updates,
[00:13:10] new releases, all the stuff that we're coming out with. And we're in probably every media type
[00:13:17] avenue, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff. So absolutely just to follow, I would highly,
[00:13:23] highly suggest you follow United Airlines and you'll see all the new stuff that we're doing
[00:13:28] and the innovation that we're doing. Well, I'll leave a link for everything so people can find
[00:13:33] out nice and easily find out more information. At the very beginning of our conversation,
[00:13:36] now you did say this was your first Cisco life. When you get that United flight home, maybe
[00:13:43] what are you going to be reflecting on? What have you enjoyed about everything that you've seen?
[00:13:46] Anything you're going to be thinking about? Yeah. I'm like I said before, I'm so excited
[00:13:51] about the Splunk acquisition and what we can do and how we can start looking at moving into the,
[00:13:59] I would say proactive area because today we feed all of our logs and feed everything to Splunk today.
[00:14:05] So having that AI generative AI alert us right now, I think it'll alert us and then
[00:14:12] eventually down the road, it'll start taking action. So to resolve problems.
[00:14:16] Well, I know how busy you've been here at your first Cisco live. It's been incredibly busy one,
[00:14:21] but just thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, share your story.
[00:14:24] Absolutely. I appreciate it. And thank you. So as we wrap up today's episode, I want to
[00:14:29] thank Dan for sharing his invaluable insights into the technological advancements at United
[00:14:35] Airlines. And I think Dan's work exemplifies how thoughtful integration of technology
[00:14:41] can create seamless experiences for millions of passengers around the world.
[00:14:46] And his leadership in platform and network engineering has not only enhanced operational
[00:14:52] efficiencies, but redefined what we can expect from customer interactions in the aviation industry.
[00:15:00] And to everyone listening who's also a passenger, I'm sure, how do you see the technological
[00:15:06] innovations impacting the future of your travel experiences? What are your expectations from the
[00:15:12] travel industry? And if those experiences are only met by one airline, would you remain
[00:15:18] loyal to that airline? So many big talking points for my conversation today, but I'd love to hear
[00:15:22] more about that. Any technologies that you would like to see implemented in your next flight,
[00:15:28] share them with me, email me techblogwriteratoutlook.com, Instagram, LinkedIn, I'm at
[00:15:34] at neilchues. Love to hear your thoughts. But as always, thanks for tuning in today. Stay connected
[00:15:42] for more intriguing discussions like this here on Tech Talks Daily. I'll be back bright and early
[00:15:47] in the morning with another guest waiting in your podcast feed. But thanks as always for listening,
[00:15:53] and until next time, don't be a stranger.