United Airlines Chatbot Fail

AI Agents hooked up directly to the customer over SMS text messaging are a disaster waiting to happen. 

A chatbot bug had real world consequences for a United Airlines customer last week - their booking got cancelled by mistake.

The United Airlines AI Agent gets it wrong over text message

The chatbot presented two options:

A) Yes, cancel & get a refund
B) No, not ready to cancel

Pretty simple you'd think, but when the customer replied B, it completely lost the context of the command and went ahead with A, the opposite option.

So the lesson here is don't trust a chatbot to know what its doing at all, and for anything important, just use the company's app or website directly. If its a complex issue, call them up and talk to an actual employee... it will probably save your time in the end.


The simple text based interface was used for many years before windows & mouse interfaces became dominant during the 1990s. Unfortunately some AI agents aren't capable of getting a basic text interface like this correct yet.

An old school text based menu interface

References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1qrrvfd/am_i_stupid_for_did_i_just_get_screwed_by_the_ai/
https://www.slalom.com/au/en/customer-stories/united-airlines-gen-ai
https://www.cio.com/article/3969476/united-airlines-ai-strategy-the-airline-that-makes-decisions-fastest-wins.html

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The iPhone Triple Zero Meltdown

The iPhone Triple Zero Meltdown is a textbook example of a safety regression, where a software patch meant to fix a critical vulnerability ends up creating a larger disaster.

The incident sent shockwaves through the Australian telecommunications industry and resulted in tens of thousands of people not being able to call Triple Zero / 000 (the Aussie equivalent of US 911 or UK 999).

1. The Goal: fix camping on

Following an Optus network outage in late 2025, Aussie regulators discovered that older 4G phones had a lethal flaw: if their primary network (e.g. Telstra) went down, the phones couldn't always "camp on" to a backup alternative network (like Optus) to dial emergency services.

To address the problem, Apple proactively released an emergency patch (iOS 16.7.13) specifically to fix the emergency service failover logic on older devices (like the iPhone 8/8+ and iPhone X). That iOS update was released on Australia Day - Monday, January 26th, 2026.

2. The Result: bricked phones

On January 28th, 2026, the Telstra customers who had installed the iOS 16.7.13 patch woke up to find their iPhones had no connectivity.

• The Bug: The update contained a flawed Carrier Settings profile that effectively mangled the handshake between the iPhone and Telstra’s towers.

• The Irony: The software designed to ensure emergency calls always worked ended up preventing the phone from connecting to the network at all. Users couldn't call / text, or use data - and most importantly - couldn't reach the emergency number, 000.
  
  

3. The Recovery: the carrier fix

Apple and Telstra pushed out a hastily prepared "Carrier Settings Update" within 24 hours of the issue happening.

• The Fix: Users were told to connect to Wi-Fi and navigate to Settings > General > About. A prompt would appear asking them to "Update to Telstra 54.1".

• The Reality: For many regional Australians without a home Wi-Fi network, their only lifeline (their phone) was dead, and they had no way to download the fix that would bring it back to life. So they had to drive to the nearest public library or McDonald’s to get the patch, and restore their phone.

References:

• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-28/telstra-warns-older-iphones-may-be-unable-to-connect-to-network/106280356
• https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1qp23gf/any_older_iphone_users_8_x_etc_do_not_install_the/
• https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/iphone-calling-issue--what-you-need-to-know

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