Decision loop
11
steps · shared by every module
The platform
SkyAide is not a chatbot with airline access. It is a governed intelligence layer: connectors that normalize context, a typed action catalogue that AI can call, and a governor that decides whether any material action is allowed to execute.
SRC · PSS
Passenger service
SRC · LOYALTY
Miles & benefits
SRC · OPS
Flight & crew
SRC · PARTNER
Airport & retail
Layer 1
Normalized context
Layer 2
Typed actions
Gate
Trust Governor
EXECUTE
Verify & learn
One decision loop, reused across every use case. Discover Options spans airline, alliance, interline, partner, loyalty, airport, catering, and destination.
The decision loop
Observe → Understand → Predict → Discover Options → Simulate → Value → Recommend → Approve → Execute → Verify → Learn.
Value principle. SkyAide must determine what is best for this passenger, this airline, and this journey, not merely what is most likely to be purchased. The system may recommend a service, an operational action, a commercial offer, a partner option, the use of an existing benefit, or no action.
Every capability reuses the same connectors, identity model, consent logic, approval workflow, execution path and audit trail. Nothing is rebuilt per feature, so what your security team reviews once holds everywhere.
01 · Data
Airline, loyalty, partner, traveler-authorized, operational, commercial, and external sources normalized into a canonical domain model that carries field-level provenance, freshness stamps, and conflict detection.
systems · PSS · loyalty · ops · partner · traveler
02 · Data
AI-drafted connectors pass contract, semantic, sandbox, adversarial, security, reliability, and human-review gates before promotion. Dual-run comparison protects live traffic.
gates · 7 · promotion · human-signed
03 · Actions
Every action is a first-class product object: typed inputs and outputs, risk class, permission scopes, preconditions, approval requirements, idempotency behavior, retry, dry-run, postconditions, compensating actions, and versioning.
risk classes · low / material / severe
04 · Identity
Resolve one traveler across PSS, loyalty, partner, and consent stores, applying authority precedence, entitlement roll-ups, and cross-system deduplication.
precedence · PSS > loyalty > partner
05 · Context
Before any recommendation is offered, SkyAide grades the context: confidence, freshness, coverage, provenance. Insufficient context routes to a human, not to a guess.
gate · configurable confidence / freshness / coverage floors
06 · Governor
AI interprets and predicts. A deterministic policy engine, not the model, decides whether a material action executes. Every approval, denial, and override is auditable and reproducible.
gate · preconditions + scope + risk + approver + dry-run · audit · immutable
07 · Measure
Every intervention is measured against a counterfactual. SkyAide learns which recommendations actually moved traveler value and airline cost, not which ones were merely clicked.
method · holdout + doubly-robust
08 · Learn
The economic learning moat compounds without leaking data between airlines. Federated updates, differential privacy budgets, per-tenant isolation.
technique · federated + DP-SGD · ε budget · per-tenant
The capabilities that ride on that foundation. Each one is an assembly of typed actions, gated by the Trust Governor, and measured against a counterfactual.
01 · Cater
Predict meal acceptance from route, cabin, tenure, prior consumption, dietary constraints, and cultural context. Optimize galley loads for waste, cost, and traveler value.
signals · route, cabin, tenure, culture, dietary
02 · Offers
Every eligible offer across airline, alliance, interline, partner, loyalty, and airport, expressed as nodes and edges in one graph the value optimizer can traverse.
scope · alliance + interline + partner + airport
03 · Value
Multi-objective optimization across passenger utility, airline margin, partner obligation, and operational cost. Outputs a ranked slate, not a single guess.
objectives · 4 · pareto-ranked slate returned
04 · Recover
When a flight breaks, evaluate the option space one passenger at a time across rebooking, rerouting, refunds, hotels, ground transport, rail, and meals, ranked by joint traveler and airline value.
granularity · per passenger, not per flight
05 · Loyalty
Recommend the best use of miles, credits, upgrades, and status benefits for each traveler, including the recommendation to hold rather than spend.
horizon · journey + forward window · includes "do not spend"
06 · Passport
A portable preference passport the traveler owns. Opt-in, cross-airline, revocable per scope, per party, per purpose.
consent · per scope · per party · per purpose · revocable
07 · Causal
Learns which interventions caused traveler value or airline lift rather than which ones merely correlated with it. Uplift first, not clicks.
method · doubly-robust causal forests · per-tenant holdouts
Connect a shadow tenant to your PSS, loyalty, and operational feeds. Governed recommendations in three weeks; measured uplift in six.
The Trust Governor
The objective is not to give AI broad system access. It is to give it a finite, typed, permissioned and auditable set of airline and partner capabilities it can use safely. Every material action clears the preconditions, permission scopes, risk class, dry-run cost, human approver and audit trail before it runs.
A second, independent governor then checks the decision itself. It enforces consent and purpose, transparency, contact frequency, suitability, value floors, non-discrimination, accessibility and price fairness, and it screens for proxy discrimination, unjustified differential treatment and dark patterns. Nothing that reaches a passenger executes without a reproducible reason.
08:41:22 recovery · rebook_pax(A.Nguyen) approved · Δcost −$142
08:41:20 value · rank_slate(SIN-LHR) recommend · conf 0.94
08:41:17 cater · predict_meal(J.Osei) predict · halal · veg
08:41:14 loyalty · loyalty_hold(K.Ito) hold · do not spend
08:41:11 context · readiness_check route to human · insufficient
08:41:08 group · solve_group(family) recommend · seats +3
08:41:04 recovery · reroute(M.Silva) approved · via LIS · Δ +$38
08:41:01 offers · offer_graph.build(HND) read · 1,204 edges
Security & data protection
SkyAide is designed for security review. Every control below is a property of how the platform is built, so it is verifiable during evaluation, before any passenger record is in scope.
Every airline is a separate tenant boundary. Cross-customer learning moves model updates under a differential privacy budget. Records never move.
AI is never granted broad system access. It may call only catalogued actions, each carrying explicit permission scopes and a risk class.
Every recommendation, approval, denial, override and execution is written to an append-only audit record that can be replayed.
A model never decides whether a material action runs. A deterministic engine evaluates preconditions, scopes, approver eligibility and dry-run cost.
Traveler preference data is opt-in and revocable per scope, per party, and per purpose. Consent state is enforced at the action gate.
SkyAide starts read-only and in shadow. Nothing touches a passenger record until your ops and security teams sign off the Governor.