22North by Phonon at APEX FTE Ancillary and Retailing 2026 Dublin

22 May, 2026By Ricky Vashi

Airline disruption recovery is evolving. Are your passenger operations ready?

Delayed aircraft, displaced crew, airport constraints, and thousands of impacted passengers can turn irregular operations (IROPs) into a complex challenge for airlines. But restoring the operational schedule is only part of the solution. Passengers also need timely updates, personalised options, and seamless access to support.

The next frontier of airline recovery is intelligent orchestration — connecting operations, passenger communication, and service resolution in real time.

At Future Travel Experience (FTE) Dublin 2026, 22North by Phonon is showcasing a new-generation passenger operations platform designed to help airlines manage disruption recovery and passenger servicing through connected, conversational experiences.

From WhatsApp and voice to RCS, SMS, and Telegram, 22North helps airlines meet passengers on familiar channels, enabling more continuous interactions around flight updates, rebooking, compensation, and customer support. By connecting passenger engagement with service workflows, airlines can move beyond fragmented notifications towards more actionable, coordinated recovery experiences.

The opportunity extends beyond customer experience. Intelligent automation and coordinated messaging can help reduce repetitive contact centre enquiries, streamline passenger servicing, and optimise communication costs. 22North aims to reduce messaging costs by up to 40%, helping airlines pursue operational efficiency without compromising passenger confidence.

As the aviation industry explores the future of connected passenger journeys, disruption recovery must become more than a reactive operational process. It must be responsive, conversational, and built around the passenger.

Meet 22North at FTE Dublin 2026 to explore how real-time orchestration is reshaping airline disruption recovery, passenger engagement, and ancillary commerce.

Because modern passenger recovery is no longer just about restoring operations. It is about restoring confidence in real time.

Learn more: https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/company/phonon-communication/

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Some milestones recognize what you have already built. Others tell you where you may be going next. On 25 September 2026, 22North won at the 5th Edition of the Royal Air Maroc Open Innovation Program, and it was both. We are proud of the First Winner trophy, but what matters more is what it recognizes: a way of thinking about passenger operations that Royal Air Maroc’s teams tested, challenged and chose to back. Royal Air Maroc Open Innovation Program: Built around real problems The Royal Air Maroc Open Innovation Program is not a pitch competition in the usual sense. It is built around real airline business challenges. The bootcamp brought together Open Innovation finalists, internal innovation projects, RAM business teams and customer-experience stakeholders. The goal was to collaborate, test ideas and turn them into tangible proof-of-concept propositions. That format shaped how we worked. Our founder and CEO, Ujwal Makhija, and our Engineering Lead, Israr Lokhandwala, spent the bootcamp working directly with the RAM Open Innovation team. They did not present to a panel from a distance. They sat with the people who live with these operational realities every day, listened to how disruption plays out for passengers and agents, and refined the proposition alongside them. It was a collaboration between a global flag carrier and an India-built aviation technology company, and it showed how quickly good ideas can move when both sides treat the problem as shared. The speed of that exchange impressed us. RAM’s teams were open, direct and quick to give feedback. That is what innovation and agility look like in practice, and we are grateful to the RAM Open Innovation team for making room for it. The problem we chose to solve Air travel has become increasingly digital, but the passenger experience can still feel surprisingly fragmented. A boarding pass sits in one channel, a gate update arrives in another, and baggage information comes from a third system. During disruption, a passenger may receive a notification and still have to visit a website, call the contact centre or find a member of airport staff to resolve the problem. From the airline’s perspective, these are different systems and operational processes. From the passenger’s perspective, it is one journey. The days leading up to our presentation were a reminder of why this matters. Headlines about air traffic control failures and widespread flight disruption in the UK showed again how quickly a technical fault can turn into hundreds of thousands of unsettled travel plans. When disruption hits, the quality of the airline’s response is measured in minutes, and in how many steps a passenger must take to get help. We chose to focus on irregular operations (IRROPS) because the need is real. When a flight is delayed or cancelled, a large number of passengers need clear information and a path forward, all at the same time. Traditional channels such as email and SMS are often poorly suited to that moment. One continuous passenger conversation Our proposition for Royal Air Maroc (RAM) was built around a WhatsApp Passenger Companion, supported by the 22North passenger-operations platform. A passenger connects through a simple QR-based onboarding experience and uses a familiar channel to access the relevant parts of their journey. That can include a digital boarding pass, flight information, gate details, baggage status and proactive operational notifications. The experience becomes more valuable when something goes wrong. Instead of telling passengers about a disruption and leaving them to work out the next step, the same conversation can support self-service actions. A passenger can view alternatives, accept another flight, request eligible recovery options or escalate to an airline representative. When human help is needed, the passenger should not have to start over. The context travels with them, and the agent picks up the conversation where the passenger left off. That is the core idea: information, transaction and assistance should form one experience. At Royal Air Maroc, the experience was designed to work in the languages RAM’s passengers use, including English, French and Arabic. Our demonstration covered the passenger journey from flight status and boarding pass access through to disruption handling and live agent handover. Working with the systems airlines already have The passenger interface is only the visible layer. The 22North platform is designed as an orchestration layer across an airline’s existing technology environment. For RAM, the solution was designed around integrations with systems such as the PSS, DCS and AODB, along with the contact-centre and customer-engagement tools the airline already uses. This matters because digital transformation does not require an airline to rip out the systems that manage bookings, departure control or airport operations. The opportunity is to connect those capabilities more effectively and make the resulting intelligence actionable at the passenger level. In practice, 22North turns operational events into appropriate passenger journeys. It determines what should happen, when it should happen, through which interaction, and what the passenger should be able to do next. We will go deeper into the solution and how it works in an upcoming post. For now, the important point is that the work was built to operate within the constraints, business rules and architecture of a real airline, not just in a controlled demo. What Ujwal had to say For Ujwal, the win reflects a belief that has guided 22North for years. “The best passenger experiences don’t come from adding more channels. They come from removing the gaps between them. Winning at Royal Air Maroc, in an environment built around real operational challenges, tells us that airlines are ready to turn disruption into a guided journey, and that innovation moves fastest when airline teams and technology partners build side by side. We are grateful for RAM’s openness, and we are only getting started.” Ujwal Makhija, Founder & CEO, 22North A milestone beyond Morocco There is another dimension to this achievement. Royal Air Maroc connects Morocco with an extensive international network, and Morocco is an important gateway between markets. Rabat is not just another city on the aviation map. For

22North Product Engineering Challenge 2026: Building Future Product Engineers Great engineers don’t just write code. They solve problems, think critically, and build products that work in the real world. The 22North Product Engineering Challenge 2026 brought aspiring engineers together to tackle real-world enterprise problems, build working products, and demonstrate their technical skills and product thinking. The goal was simple: go beyond conventional coding assessments and understand how participants approach the challenges of building real products. Beyond Code: Thinking Like a Product Engineer At 22North, we believe great engineering starts with understanding the problem before writing the solution. Participants were encouraged to question assumptions, interpret business requirements, prioritise features, and make practical trade-offs while balancing usability, scalability, security, and engineering quality. The challenge also encouraged participants to explore modern cloud architecture and scalable deployment using platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). What Were We Looking For? Participants were evaluated on more than just working code. Key areas included: Product quality: Does the solution work as intended? UI/UX and usability: Is it intuitive and easy to use? Product thinking: Does it solve the right problem? Technical architecture: Is the solution well designed? Business understanding: Does it address real-world needs? Engineering quality: Is the implementation reliable and maintainable? Scalability and security: Can the solution support future growth? Communication: Can participants clearly explain their decisions and demonstrate their products? These criteria reflect the skills required to build effective technology in real enterprise environments. From Ideas to Working Products Participants explored practical problems across aviation, AI, cloud, and enterprise technology. They had to translate ideas into working solutions, make informed engineering decisions, and explain the thinking behind their approach. The emphasis was not simply on building more features, but on making thoughtful decisions about what to build, how to build it, and why it matters. Building the Next Generation of Product Engineers The future belongs to engineers who can connect technology with business needs and user expectations. Through the Product Engineering Challenge 2026, 22North set out to recognise aspiring engineers who look beyond the code—those who ask better questions, think critically, and turn complex problems into practical solutions. Because building great products takes more than technical skill. It takes curiosity, sound judgement, and a product mindset. At 22North, that’s how we think about engineering—and how we discover the talent that will shape what comes next.

22North by Phonon at APEX FTE Ancillary and Retailing 2026 Dublin

Airline disruption recovery is evolving. Are your passenger operations ready?

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