AI startup stratosX reunites former Southwest Airlines trailblazers to pioneer new recovery operations technology
stratosX has named Matt Hafner as a Strategic Advisor and Charles Cunningham as Chief Product Officer — reuniting three former Southwest Airlines operators who helped shape one of the most studied OCCs in commercial aviation.
“stratosX's X360 platform is the cleanest expression I have seen of a truly holistic approach to recovery operations, and it is the right moment to be building it.” — Charles Cunningham, Chief Product Officer, stratosX
MONTREAL — May 28, 2026 — stratosX, the Montreal-based AI company building integrated recovery technology for airline Operational Control Centers (OCCs), has named Matt Hafner as a Strategic Advisor and Charles Cunningham as Chief Product Officer. The appointments reunite three former Southwest Airlines operators who helped shape the Company's OCC into one of the most studied in commercial aviation. Their reunion at stratosX signals where they collectively believe the next phase of operations work belongs.
Hafner, who spent 37 years at Southwest Airlines, including as Vice President of Network Operations and Vice President of Ground Operations, was responsible for leading the full-scale transformation of the Company's operational control. Cunningham, meanwhile, was a principal architect behind Southwest's day-of-operations and analytics engine. Both reconnect at stratosX with co-founder and COO Kaitlin Guarino, who launched the Company after serving as Director of Southwest's Network Operations Control (NOC).
Hafner says of the move: “I'm proud of the work we did at Southwest. That operation became what it is because of relentless investment and a team that knows what excellence looks like. What drew me to stratosX is what it enables: when iteration can happen weekly and legacy system continuity isn't doing the driving, you can build the integration layer the industry has been trying to crack for two decades. That is what is happening here, and I am excited to be part of it.”
The appointments come as airline operations face a recovery environment that has changed faster than the systems designed to manage it. European Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delays hit a 23-year high in 2024; EU261 reform remains deadlocked in Brussels; and last week's cascading Irregular Operations (IROPS) event at Nashville International disrupted more than 150 flights across four major carriers in a single afternoon.
Southwest's own operational rebuild, largely contributed to by Hafner and Cunningham, represents one of the most ambitious modernization programs in commercial aviation, with more than $1 billion invested since 2023. The opportunity now, the new team members believe, is to take on the integration problem with a single focus: expedited recovery and lasting resilience. A startup is an ideal environment to achieve such targets, as a solution can be built around the problem itself, whereas it is harder from inside a working airline, where stability tends to outweigh innovation.
Cunningham explains: “Recovery comprises the main considerations of aircraft, crew, and passengers. However, it is not three problems solved in sequence, it is one problem that necessitates simultaneous visibility across the board. This is why, at stratosX, our X360 recovery platform features ‘domain agents' for aircraft, crew, and passengers, which negotiate proposals from holistic analysis. Not only that, but the platform features a Golden Record data spine that holds together when sources conflict and includes a human in the loop to ensure informed, reliable decision-making. X360 is the cleanest expression I have seen of such a holistic approach, and it is the right moment to be building it.”
stratosX will sponsor and speak at Aviation Festival Americas in Miami in June, where CEO Ghislain Gagné will deliver the presentation The Recovery Paradox: Why Good Recovery Gets Punished, Not Funded. The session will make the case for recovery being aviation's largest unmeasured function and aims to provide audiences with actionable and integration-ready measurement frameworks.
Ghislain Gagné, CEO of stratosX, concludes: “Matt and Charles know what it takes to build operational systems at Southwest's scale, and what it costs when those systems fail to keep pace. Having them alongside Kaitlin sharpens everything we are doing at stratosX.”
