Think Twice Before Checking Your Phone on a Flight in France — It Could Cost $23,000
Think Twice Before Checking Your Phone on a Flight in France — It Could Cost $23,000
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https://www.fodors.com/world/europe/france/experiences/news/think-twice-before-checking-your-phone-on-a-flight-in-france-it-could-cost-23-000
France is cracking down on disruptive airline passengers.
Air travel has become a nightmare. If it’s not the squeezed seats, flight disruptions, or baggage restrictions, it’s the people behaving poorly on board. But one European country has had enough of temper tantrums by fliers. France is introducing new sanctions, including bans and heavy fines, to deal with disruptive passengers who make the experience unpleasant for everyone.
The French government argues that disruptive passengers pose a safety risk. There are between 200 and 500 incidents in Europe every month. Passengers who behave poorly can now face fines between €10,000 and €20,000 ($11,543-$23,000) or be banned from flying for four years for more serious offenses. The rules apply to all flight operators licensed by the country.
The three offenses are using electronic devices when prohibited, obstructing flight crew or compromising safety operations, and refusing crew safety instructions, EuroNews reports. French Minister of Transport Philippe Tabarot said, “With this decree, we’re equipping ourselves with the means for swift, fair and proportionate enforcement. This new regulatory framework sends a strong message: disruptive behaviour will no longer be tolerated.”
France also has policies in place to criminally prosecute people for the worst offenses on board; disruptive passengers can be jailed for up to five years and/or face fines up to €75,000 ($86,500). The new sanctions will work alongside these policies.
Across Europe, an airline is also pushing back against disruptive passengers. Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair is taking disruptive passengers to court and announced that if a passenger is ejected due to their behavior, they will be fined £500 ($654) by the airline.
Disruptions in the U.S.
Worldwide, interfering with the crew or hindering flight operations is an offense and can land you in serious legal trouble. But that hasn’t stopped people from losing their cool. Every week, there are multiple incidents of fights, screaming, biting, and punching on board, and the friendly skies are feeling hostile.
In the U.S., unruly passenger incidents peaked during the pandemic. In 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration received 5,972 reports—a 492% increase from the previous year. Although the incidents have decreased drastically since the FAA introduced hefty fines and jail time under its zero-tolerance policy, disruptions still occur. Just this month, a flight carrying four members of Congress was diverted when a passenger turned disruptive.
This week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched a new initiative, The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You, urging fliers to behave civilly. The video shows clips of air travel in the past followed by recent clashes, fights, and outbursts on planes. Duffy addresses passengers in the video and says, “We should bring civility and manners back,” referring to the Golden Age of Travel.
In an Instagram post where he shared the video, he said that one in five flight attendants have reported experiencing physical incidents. He also advises people to dress with respect, be courteous, and say thank you to their flight attendants and pilots.
Thiago B Trevisan/Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/heres-some-genuinely-heartwarming-travel-news-how-delta-crew-and-passengers-saved-a-couples-dream-trip
And other news that you may have missed.
This week in travel, we have several stories that may have flown under your radar. Among them: nearly 82 million travelers are expected to travel on Thanksgiving; China issues a warning against travel to Japan; and, in a heart-warming story, Delta passengers and crew saved a couple’s dream vacation.
Dive into these and more as we examine the latest in travel news.
PHOTO: TierneyMJ/Shutterstock
Huge Number of Americans Expected to Travel During Thanksgiving
The most popular domestic destinations are Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. Top international choices include Paris, Amsterdam, and Vienna.
PHOTO: Phattana/iStock
China Warns Against Travel to Japan
China has issued a warning to its citizens to avoid travel to Japan after recent comments on Taiwan. The government said that the Japanese prime minister’s remarks pose a threat to the safety of Chinese tourists in Japan, and the advisory urges people to “refrain from visiting Japan for the time being.” The public dispute between the two countries has led airlines to offer refunds and free changes to flights after the advisory.
Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said in Parliament that China’s attack on Taiwan could be an “existential threat to Japan,” requiring military intervention. The statement called these remarks “blatantly provocative” and said they have further damaged relations.
FAA Says Airline Operations Can Return to Normal
More than 10,000 air traffic controllers worked without pay during the longest U.S. government shutdown. Staffing shortages worsened during the month-long shutdown as more workers called in sick. To manage flights with fewer staff, the FAA reduced air traffic by 10% at the 40 busiest U.S. airports.
PHOTO: Courtesy United Airlines
Flight Makes Emergency Landing Due to Fake Bomb Threat
On Sunday, a United flight from Dallas to Chicago was diverted to St. Louis after a passenger claimed there was a bomb in his wife’s purse. The pilot made an emergency landing, and all 119 passengers and five crew members deplaned, allowing law enforcement to search the aircraft. The man was arrested, and the FBI is investigating. The flight resumed and landed in Chicago more than five and a half hours after its scheduled arrival.
After 20 minutes without luck, the Boles deplaned, believing their trip was over. The crew continued searching, and a flight attendant ran to bring the couple back on board after finding the passport.
The moment was captured by a fellow flier and went viral last week. The poster explained in comments, “They checked in, boarded, but couldn’t find their passport. This was odd because they had it at check-in. They looked everywhere, in all their stuff, in their seats, in the bathroom, all over. People were helping look. Announcements were made from the pilot. But they couldn’t find it. They had copies of their passports, but international laws won’t let them enter Cape Town without their physical passports. So they had to deboard the plane to not risk a 14.5 hour flight to be sent home. Then this awesome flight attendant found it in the depths of their seat!!”
In the end, the retiring pilot made an exception to allow the couple to board—the air bridge had to be reconnected—and ultimately saved their trip. Tim Boles told ABC, “It was neat that, you know, all the flight attendants were just happy to have you on board—and the passengers, the passengers that we thought were going to be upset with us were all cheering for us.”
Remapping travel with agentic AI
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel/our-insights/remapping-travel-with-agentic-ai?
Alex Cosmas is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New York office; Jules Seeley is a senior partner in the Boston office; Kelly Ungerman is a senior partner in the Dallas office; Ryan Mann is a partner in the Chicago office; Vik Krishnan is a senior partner in the San Francisco office; Alex Gersovitz is an associate partner in the Southern California office; Isabelle Tamburro is a consultant in the Charlotte office; and Jane Kennedy is a consultant in the Washington, DC, office.
Agentic AI could upend the travel industry. Travel and hospitality organizations should explore how agentic can help catalyze AI’s transformative potential.
Agentic AI is the buzziest new tech tool on the scene, and it offers thrilling capabilities. While gen AI mostly functions as an adviser by providing well-informed counsel, agentic AI can function more as a direct report by accomplishing tasks. It has the agency to make decisions and then autonomously act on them. It can identify problems, find fixes, and apply solutions all on its own. It’s smart and tireless, a self-starter and go-getter, requiring only limited human oversight. Perhaps most important: Agentic AI can serve as an interface that could help companies harness the full power of AI.
Given the tremendous potential of agentic AI, travel and hospitality companies are beginning to experiment with it. But to realize the technology’s full impact, organizations will need to create new AI strategies, governance, and infrastructure—altering core business processes and ways of working. Companies will have to shift from scattered pilots to enterprise-scale transformations architected by cross-functional teams and championed by deeply engaged C-suite leaders.
What does the travel industry need to know as it ponders going all in on agentic AI? How suited is this technology to the unique dynamics of the travel sector? Which consumer- and non-consumer-facing use cases could offer travel and hospitality players the most ROI in the near term and over the long haul? How can organizations integrate agentic AI in ways that will allow it to deliver maximum benefit to companies, workers, and consumers?
A new report, Remapping travel with agentic AI—a collaboration between McKinsey and Skift—examines the potential for agentic AI to unleash the full value of AI in travel. Based on analysis incorporating surveys of 1,002 travelers and 86 travel executives, the report traces the digital prologue that brought the industry to this moment, details agentic AI’s transformative capabilities for both travelers and travel companies, and provides a blueprint for travel and hospitality leaders who are eager to accelerate their organizations’ agentic AI initiatives.
AI’s growing but not fully realized role in travel
AI has seen accelerating adoption in the travel industry. Only about 4 percent of companies in the Skift Travel 200 (a subset of the largest publicly traded travel companies in the world) mentioned some form of AI in their 2022 annual reports. By 2024, that had risen to 35 percent.Meanwhile, AI-based travel start-ups are attracting a surge of venture capital interest. In 2023, according to Skift tracking, only about 10 percent of travel-industry-related venture capital funding went to travel start-ups that provided AI-enabled offerings. By the first half of 2025, that figure was 45 percent.
Some travel and hospitality companies seem excited about the opportunities that AI is presenting. In a survey of 86 mostly US-based travel executives conducted for this report, 26 percent of respondents say that introducing AI to their organizations has led to cost reductions in operations, 30 percent say that it’s aiding faster decision-making, 33 percent say that it’s improving customer personalization, 36 percent say that it’s enabling higher-quality outputs, and 59 percent say that it’s increasing employee productivity. A majority of respondents indicate that adopting AI in their organizations has resulted, over the past three years, in more than 6 percent annual revenue growth and more than 6 percent annual cost savings. (It’s important to distinguish the broader definition of the term “AI” and the capabilities that it encompasses from the narrower definition implied by the term “gen AI.”)
Challenges that hinder AI’s deployment in travel
Despite all this burgeoning enthusiasm and adoption, however, the travel and hospitality sectors still appear to lag behind others in terms of AI maturity. Travel companies’ AI-based efforts have largely centered on creating enterprise-wide copilots and chatbots, and such efforts have scaled quickly. But for the most part, these more horizontal initiatives have delivered diffuse, hard-to-measure gains. Vertical use cases that are function specific to the travel sector could be more transformative, but the vast majority of these more focused experiments have remained stuck in pilot mode.Why has the travel industry faced challenges as it attempts to dive deeper into AI? Two possibilities emerge as central stumbling blocks:
*-Siloed data and incompatible systems make using AI more difficult. The travel industry (and especially hospitality) is highly fragmented, cobbled together in part from countless small to medium-size businesses spread across nearly every country. The lack of centralized data ownership across the travel ecosystem limits the network effects and feedback loops that typically accelerate AI performance. As a result, it can be exceptionally challenging for travel companies to train effective AI models or to deliver personalized, real-time, AI-powered experiences at scale.
*-Travel companies tend to favor investment in human interconnection instead of tech innovation. Some of the travel sector’s wariness regarding AI might be attributed to the industry’s general view that it specializes in service, not technology. New tech capabilities are often seen as enablers but not as core business components. As a result, tech talent and tech investment can lag behind.
Agentic: The next chapter in AI’s evolution
In just the time since the publication of the 2023 McKinsey and Skift report on AI in travel, there have been some remarkable AI innovations. Perhaps chief among these is the advent of agentic AI, a cutting-edge technology poised to revolutionize the travel industry. A few features distinguish agentic AI from previous forms of AI (including gen AI): *- Agentic AI can autonomously make decisions and take the initiative to accomplish goals, using multistep reasoning while undertaking complex actions.
*- To execute tasks, agentic AI can call on external tools, APIs, and systems.
*- Agentic AI can store and recall long-term, structured memories that track context, progress, and user preferences, allowing it to deeply personalize its responses and to handle requests spread across multiple sessions.
While gen AI has mostly played a reactive, advisory role—answering research questions and offering helpful suggestions when specifically prompted to do so—agentic AI takes a far more proactive posture. An AI agent can carry out a complicated task end to end and can even direct teams of other AI agents to work together on the project. Agentic can monitor a situation, understand on its own when intervention is necessary, and then develop a responsive plan and enact it with little human involvement. It can also remember who someone is and what they’ve needed in the past and then incorporate that understanding into the present.
This wariness is understandable, especially given the pervasive reports of hallucinations occurring in gen AI output. Only 2 percent of respondents in Skift’s State of Travel 2025 report say that they’re currently willing to give an AI tool full autonomy to “take the wheel”—to make and modify travel bookings without human oversight. Travel companies will need to work to build consumer trust in tech capabilities.
This is a place where agentic AI could potentially make a meaningful difference. It can detangle the more specific, thornier issues that gen AI is unable to handle. And the technology could go a step further by resolving issues on its own instead of merely suggesting solutions.
While gen AI has mostly played a reactive, advisory role—answering research questions and offering helpful suggestions when specifically prompted to do so—agentic AI takes a far more proactive posture. An AI agent can carry out a complicated task end to end and can even direct teams of other AI agents to work together on the project. Agentic can monitor a situation, understand on its own when intervention is necessary, and then develop a responsive plan and enact it with little human involvement. It can also remember who someone is and what they’ve needed in the past and then incorporate that understanding into the present.
The agentic-AI-powered future of customer experience in travel
As customers have developed greater familiarity with AI-based tools, their trust in those tools has increased. More than 90 percent of customers report some confidence in the accuracy of travel information that they receive through AI. It’s worth noting, however, that consumers tend to express more comfort with using currently available AI tools to brainstorm in open-ended ways (such as finding inspiration or destination ideas) than with using these tools in more high-stakes situations (such as understanding visa requirements and resolving customer service issues).This wariness is understandable, especially given the pervasive reports of hallucinations occurring in gen AI output. Only 2 percent of respondents in Skift’s State of Travel 2025 report say that they’re currently willing to give an AI tool full autonomy to “take the wheel”—to make and modify travel bookings without human oversight. Travel companies will need to work to build consumer trust in tech capabilities.
This is a place where agentic AI could potentially make a meaningful difference. It can detangle the more specific, thornier issues that gen AI is unable to handle. And the technology could go a step further by resolving issues on its own instead of merely suggesting solutions.
How agentic AI can improve travel’s internal workflows
A McKinsey report on the economic potential of gen AI found that its top use cases in terms of financial impact on companies were in marketing, sales, customer service, and internal software engineering. Investing in internal use cases can have multiple benefits. For instance, risk reduction: When mistakes occur in the early application of a new technology, they’re far less costly if confined to internal use cases. Also, building muscle memory: Piloting technologies in internal workflows can help develop organizational familiarity and technical readiness that accelerates the rollout of future customer-facing innovations.Agentic AI’s value for frontline travel workers
Frontline workers often spend considerable time on repetitive, manual tasks. Agentic AI could, for instance, automate the airline rebooking process during travel disruptions and handle routine tasks, such as processing refunds and issuing vouchers. This could free frontline employees to focus more on empathetic, human-to-human customer interactions.Agentic AI’s potential to transform hotel operations
Hotel operations and property management involve a large volume of quick, on-the-go decisions. Letting agentic AI make some of those decisions could lead to significant efficiency improvements: *- Automated guest room allocation: By connecting to a customer data platform, agentic AI could automatically execute room assigning in ways that incorporate guests’ preferences, loyalty tiers, and feedback from past stays. This can improve the guest experience while also reducing work for employees.
*- Predictive maintenance: Agentic AI could anticipate when elements of the hotel property will need attention. It could plan repairs based on input from smart sensors, maintenance and housekeeping logs, and guest feedback.
*- Housekeeping task management: Using information such as staffing levels, guest schedules, and computer vision analysis of rooms after guest departures, agentic AI could dynamically identify and assign housekeeping tasks in ways that optimize workflows, minimize delays, and ensure that rooms are cleaned efficiently and on time.
*- Menu engineering: Agentic systems could autonomously analyze and optimize food and beverage menu offerings and prices based on demand, ordering trends, and profitability and automatically procure needed inventory ahead of time.
Using agentic AI in airline pricing and revenue management
There are many opportunities for agentic AI to provide value in airline offer management. Agentic’s ability to analyze shifting information and execute tasks could combine to improve the way that offers are crafted: *- Dynamic bundling: Agentic AI could create personalized bundles that are tailored to passenger preferences. This can help ensure that offerings are relevant to customer needs, boost conversion rates, and maximize the value captured from ancillaries, such as checked bags and extra legroom.
*- Real-time pricing: Using up-to-the-moment information and indicators (such as search trends, weather conditions, and third-party data), agentic AI could dynamically adjust pricing to align with real-time market conditions and demand forecasts.
*- Load factor optimization: Airlines purposefully overbook seats to achieve maximum load factors (in other words, seats filled) on aircraft. Agentic AI could automate and fine-tune overbooking calculations by analyzing past booking patterns, no-show rates, and various other external inputs.
*- Loyalty reward personalization: Agentic AI could help create tailored loyalty rewards and proactively send them to program members. This could enhance customer engagement, improve customer retention rates, and increase the lifetime value of a given customer.
Some companies have discovered an interesting approach to remediating their tech foundations that might be described as “tech, heal thyself.” In these cases, agentic AI is deployed to orchestrate autonomous squads of specialized AI agents that can assess, update, and build complex tech infrastructures on their own. Agents within each squad automate tasks such as reverse engineering code and performing quality assurance.
A primary note of caution for organizations is to be cognizant of the potential for AI fatigue—employees feeling overwhelmed by ubiquitous and ambiguous directives to incorporate AI into their workflows. To address and prevent further AI fatigue, organizations should avoid pushing the broad use of AI without clear and direct purpose, focusing instead on a few high-value tools that employees will actually use.
Technologies such as agentic AI don’t reimagine the why of travel. They reimagine the how. They can reduce friction across the journey, make personalization truly scalable, and free employees to focus less on managing systems and more on delivering meaningful service.
Agentic AI has enormous potential to deliver richer and more tailored experiences to consumers—not by replacing the human touch, but by enhancing it. The companies that lead during this next chapter won’t necessarily be those that can adopt agentic AI the fastest. It will be the companies that can deploy agentic AI in ways that feel authentic to both the organization and the customers it serves. The true magic of travel lies not in the capabilities that technology provides but in the moments, memories, and relationships that only people can create.
Launching and accelerating agentic AI adoption
Of the travel executives we surveyed, 90 percent say that their organizations currently use gen AI in some capacity, but 38 percent say that they’re not using agentic AI at all. And while 22 percent say that gen AI use is widespread across their organizations, only 2 percent say the same of agentic AI. Insights and lessons learned from tech adoption efforts across various industries can provide a valuable road map for travel companies that hope to initiate or accelerate their own adoption of agentic AI.Prepare your technology foundations
Travel organizations can begin by examining their baseline tech conditions. Building out agentic system capabilities will require foundations such as a scalable cloud infrastructure, strong data readiness, and previous implementation of more conventional forms of AI. Future possibilities are exciting, but it’s only when solid infrastructure is in place that agentic AI can thrive.Some companies have discovered an interesting approach to remediating their tech foundations that might be described as “tech, heal thyself.” In these cases, agentic AI is deployed to orchestrate autonomous squads of specialized AI agents that can assess, update, and build complex tech infrastructures on their own. Agents within each squad automate tasks such as reverse engineering code and performing quality assurance.
Chart a digital road map for integrating agentic AI
Our survey of travel executives reveals that their most cited challenge regarding AI adoption is a lack of technical expertise and talent. But their second-most-cited challenge is a lack of a clear road map for business domain transformations. Technology doesn’t work in isolation from the organization’s broader functionality. Among the most critical prerequisites for any company seeking to adopt advanced technologies, such as agentic AI, is the creation of a digital road map backed by senior leadership and tied to business outcomes.Upskill employees to provide needed capabilities
Introducing new technologies into the core of a business can fundamentally change the skills that employees will need on a day-to-day basis. Organizations should direct resources to upskill those workers and make them feel comfortable with the new tech. McKinsey analysis has found that the top barrier to implementing growth strategies, especially those related to digitalization, is talent.A primary note of caution for organizations is to be cognizant of the potential for AI fatigue—employees feeling overwhelmed by ubiquitous and ambiguous directives to incorporate AI into their workflows. To address and prevent further AI fatigue, organizations should avoid pushing the broad use of AI without clear and direct purpose, focusing instead on a few high-value tools that employees will actually use.
Foster a quick-moving, flexible corporate culture
The pace of agentic AI’s advancement is rapidly accelerating. Ignoring fast-moving developments in this space could easily lead to a competitive disadvantage. To avoid this, companies need to foster cultures of flexibility, experimentation, and adaptability. They should stay constantly informed about new tools and platforms entering the market, conduct regular build-versus-buy assessments, and maintain a willingness to pause or pivot from projects when necessary.Redesign end-to-end business processes
A McKinsey survey of executives who’ve launched digital transformations found that more than 70 percent said that their organizations’ transformations lost momentum during adoption and scaling. This is the danger for companies beginning agentic AI journeys. Simply integrating a new AI use case into existing processes or workflows isn’t enough to realize value and remain competitive and relevant. Successful adoption and scaling of agentic AI will require rethinking and redesigning underlying business processes so that the organization can sustain new ways of working.Technologies such as agentic AI don’t reimagine the why of travel. They reimagine the how. They can reduce friction across the journey, make personalization truly scalable, and free employees to focus less on managing systems and more on delivering meaningful service.
Agentic AI has enormous potential to deliver richer and more tailored experiences to consumers—not by replacing the human touch, but by enhancing it. The companies that lead during this next chapter won’t necessarily be those that can adopt agentic AI the fastest. It will be the companies that can deploy agentic AI in ways that feel authentic to both the organization and the customers it serves. The true magic of travel lies not in the capabilities that technology provides but in the moments, memories, and relationships that only people can create.
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