Travel disruption is a productivity nightmare – AI is the game changing solution

It was only a few years ago that some commentators hailed the death of business travel due to remote work and video conferencing. They were wrong.

In-person meetings have proven to be more resilient than anyone could have anticipated. New research has found that 90% of business travelers think corporate trips are an essential investment or necessary cost.

But as our desire to connect has surged, we’ve also seen a rise in travel disruptions. From the chaos of Storm Fern in the U.S. earlier this year to the looming Atlantic hurricane season, the question isn't if a disruption will hit, but how travelers and businesses will be supported when it does.

Co-founder and CTO, Navan.

When disruptions happen, the impact ripples far beyond just the traveler. Airports scramble and airlines race to reschedule. For travel managers and executive assistants, a single cancellation can lead to a mountain of manual admin and lost hours.

At the same time, expecting a human-powered help desk to handle a massive spike in volume, is like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol. It doesn't scale. It just breaks. That’s why AI is a critical operational tool that can keep everything moving.

When built properly, AI can address real-world operational problems at a scale humans simply can’t match. The fire at Heathrow Airport in 2025 is another example of this. The incident grounded over 1,000 flights, disrupting 300,000 travelers. The surge in queries was impossible for human support to handle alone.

During the fire, we saw AI playing an instrumental role in helping customers reroute their travel and reschedule hotel bookings – all without needing to connect with a human agent. AI-powered agents and other tools can now effectively send out proactive alerts to warn travelers about disruptions.

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This includes live maps to show businesses exactly which of their employees are affected, and instantly making self-serve rebooking available. Where human help is required, expert agents can now step in seamlessly, supported by AI that provides a complete, instant view of the traveler’s situation to deliver a quick resolution.

Not just about speed

But the upside isn’t just about speed. AI agents can also decode the jargon-heavy communications that often confuse travelers and businesses during a crisis, such as airline waivers.

When severe weather hits, airlines issue these temporary policy reprieves, dropping the usual change fees and penalties so passengers can alter their plans. The catch is that capitalizing on them traditionally requires a human agent to manually interpret the fine print. This creates massive bottlenecks and delays – right when travelers need help the most.

In contrast, AI can instantly read the rules and apply the correct waiver codes to help reschedule flights. Travelers get rebooked without lifting a finger or paying extra, while businesses see a dramatic reduction in human support volumes and operational costs.

We’ve seen firsthand what this looks like in practice. During Storm Fern in the U.S. earlier this year, live chat volumes surged as business travelers tried to grapple with the worst travel disruption since pandemic lockdowns.

AI agents successfully handled a massive volume of chats, many of them end-to-end autonomously. This then freed up human agents to focus on the most complex, high-impact cases where their judgement adds the most value.

To sum up

As extreme weather and unexpected disruptions become more frequent, business leaders and travel providers alike face a choice between sticking with the status quo or investing in systems that anticipate chaos.

Travel will always involve uncertainty – weather and geopolitics can guarantee that. But with the right AI infrastructure, disruption becomes manageable, not just for travelers, but for the entire travel ecosystem.

The future of travel support isn’t about having more people on standby. It’s about building smarter, autonomous systems that are always ready to keep the world moving, no matter what.

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