Philippine Airlines earns passenger trust by transforming customer support with Twilio Flex

Challenge

Philippine Airlines needed to modernize its legacy systems and provide personalized customer experiences for millions of passengers while rebuilding from one of its most significant crises.

Solution

The airline implemented Twilio Flex to transform its contact center operations, enhance passenger experiences, and unify its communications across various departments.

Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) has been a symbol of Filipino warmth in the skies for over eight decades. As the oldest continuously operating commercial airline in Asia, PAL connects the Philippines to major regions of the world through approximately 31 domestic and 39 international destinations, subject to seasonal and network adjustments.

Since the pandemic, the airline has set a clear course for recovery and long-term growth, anchored on fleet modernization, selective nonstop route expansion, and the restoration and introduction of key destinations, aligned with evolving market demand and strategic priorities.

PAL’s turnaround followed one of the most challenging periods in global aviation. In 2021, the airline entered Chapter 11 restructuring proceedings in the United States and successfully emerged later that year with a strengthened balance sheet and restructured operations. Since then, PAL has reported steadily improving financial and operational performance, including a return to profitability in subsequent years, based on publicly disclosed results.

Modernization efforts and a renewed focus on passengers have played a central role in this recovery.

“It’s been a story of transformation,” said Mark Anthony Munsayac, Vice President for Customer Experience. “We refocused our strategies around digital transformation and reshaping our culture.”

That cultural shift is centered on earning and sustaining customer trust through consistent, reliable, and increasingly personalized service.

“For us, loyalty is about earning passenger trust,” Munsayac added. “Passengers may still fly for convenience or price even after a poor experience, but our goal is for them to choose Philippine Airlines because we’ve earned their trust.”

Delivering that experience consistently is complex. In 2025, PAL carried over 16 million passengers, each interacting with the airline across multiple touchpoints — from flight disruptions and rebookings to refunds, loyalty inquiries, and day-of-travel support.

“We want to provide a personalized experience at scale while maintaining the Filipino warmth passengers expect from us,” said Munsayac. “Technology helps us deliver sustainable service quality and supports long-term revenue growth from loyal customers.”

Creating connected experiences

PAL is making more strategic use of customer data to better understand passenger preferences and anticipate needs across the travel journey. This approach is focused on digital and customer support touchpoints, including online servicing, contact center interactions, disruption handling, rebookings, refunds, and loyalty-related inquiries, helping deliver more consistent, relevant, and timely support across channels.

In its daily operations, PAL’s contact centers run on Twilio Flex, a flexible customer engagement platform integrated with the airline’s customer systems. This integration brings passenger interactions together across channels and provides agents with greater visibility into each passenger’s journey, enabling faster resolution and more context-aware support. 

“Since implementing the platform, our average contact center wait time has dropped to under one minute,” said Munsayac, based on internal performance tracking. “Shorter handle times and expanded self-service options have helped drive operational efficiency and cost savings.”

He added, “Our next focus is making this performance consistent throughout the day — not just on average — especially during flight disruptions when call volumes can spike. We’re doing this by expanding automation across both chat and voice, including options for involuntary and voluntary rebookings, as well as new bookings.”

“Together, these improvements have contributed to a meaningful increase in customer satisfaction, which in recent measurements has reached around 95%, placing us among the stronger performers in the industry.”

Munsayac’s team is also using Twilio Flex to connect communications across different departments.

“We’re finalizing the design for an end-to-end communication platform to provide a more personalized experience for our passengers,” he said. “It’s not just the customer experience team involved — we’re collaborating closely with marketing, engineering, and loyalty teams.”

For example, if a frequent flyer typically prepays for baggage but has not done so a few days before their flight, PAL can automatically send a reminder through the passenger’s preferred channel. This simple action improves convenience for customers while also driving incremental value for the airline.

As Munsayac explained, “Our focus is on servicing first. Revenue follows when we offer the right ancillary services to the right passenger, at the right moment, based on what we know about them.”

Balancing AI and human customer support

PAL’s connected platform has given it a strong foundation to roll out additional automation and AI-driven services. The airline has launched a generative AI chat experience to assist travelers online and is currently testing voicebots to handle selected call types.

“We’re aiming to reach what we call a ‘super AI agent’ state by April 2026, where around 80 percent of the tasks a live agent can perform can be handled by AI,” Munsayac shared.

Today, AI supports approximately 10% of customer service tasks, including flight status checks and basic requests.

“Our deflection rate is about 45%, meaning nearly half of customer concerns are resolved without being transferred to a live agent,” said Munsayac.

At the same time, PAL is intentional about maintaining customer choice.

“We’re not hiding our live agents — passengers can always choose to connect with one. Our goal is for customers to use digital and automated options because they deliver a better experience, not because they’re forced to.”

This balanced approach is delivering results. PAL has achieved around 30% monthly cost savings in its customer service operations and expects further gains as AI capabilities continue to mature.

Building smarter operations

Munsayac emphasized that modernization at PAL is not about adopting technology for its own sake.

“It has to solve real problems and genuinely elevate our capabilities,” he said.

PAL has already deployed multiple AI use cases across its operations, spanning both customer experience and core airline functions. These include generative AI–powered customer support as well as operational AI applications such as aircraft predictive maintenance.

The airline is building its AI capabilities on a modular, partner-agnostic architecture, allowing it to integrate new tools and technologies as they mature. In operations, PAL applies predictive models to aircraft maintenance, analyzing large volumes of sensor data and maintenance records to identify potential issues before they occur.

“With the terabytes of data generated by aircraft sensors and maintenance reports, we can anticipate which components may require attention before a failure happens,” said Munsayac. “This helps us improve reliability, enhance safety, and minimize operational disruptions.”

Looking ahead, the airline also plans to implement a customer data platform, bringing together loyalty programs, communications, and service operations into a more unified system to further strengthen customer relationships.

“It sounds simple but delivering a personalized and consistent experience requires alignment across different stakeholders and the right technology and partners,” Munsayac said. “It’s not just a project or a department’s job — it’s a capability we must build together as an organization.”