Are there any startups or established companies developing innovative SaaS products tailored for airlines? What challenges are they addressing, and what unique features are they offering?
Looking forward to hearing about any interesting projects and insights from those in the industry!
(I have no special airline industry knowledge.)
The first step would be to find out and truly understand why things are the way they are today. They didn't get there on accident - so before cooking up a plan to "improve" the industry you must first understand what the industry would consider an improvement.
Also, it will be difficult to break out into an industry like Airlines. They will be conservative in nature and risk averse. It's unlikely they will take a gamble on an unknown startup's service/platform.
Lastly - the issue they've experienced over the past few days is not something a startup or SaaS platform would have prevented.