Case Study: Hawaiian Airlines improves customer support response during COVID-19 with LaunchDarkly

How feature management helped Hawaiian Airlines respond to a global crisis

Hawaiian Airlines was already using agile and DevOps practices, but the COVID-19 pandemic created a sudden need for tighter control over feature releases. With travel halted, the airline faced a surge in customer service requests, including phone wait times reaching 4 hours and more than 2,500 inquiries in a single day. Hawaiian Airlines needed a faster way to help guests while reducing pressure on its support team, and LaunchDarkly’s feature management capabilities fit that need.

LaunchDarkly helped Hawaiian Airlines respond to the crisis by giving teams more control over how and when features were released, enabling them to quickly support new workflows such as the online cancellation form. This allowed the airline to process refunds and rebookings more efficiently, easing the burden on employees working around the clock. The result was improved responsiveness during the disruption, with LaunchDarkly helping Hawaiian Airlines better manage customer demand at a critical time.

Hawaiian Airlines

Manjari Ranganathan

IT Manager