Every airline wants to be "best in digital."
It's a phrase that appears in strategy decks, transformation programmes, conference presentations, and executive ambitions across the industry. More recently, AI has become the latest benchmark of digital progress, with airlines announcing copilots, conversational assistants, personalised recommendations and generative AI initiatives at an unprecedented pace.
But ask ten airline executives what being "best in digital and AI" means, and you'll probably get ten different answers.
Some will point to a modern mobile app. Others to a redesigned booking experience, biometric boarding, AI-powered customer service or industry awards. All of these can be valuable, but none of them, on their own, tells you whether an airline is truly leading.
Because digital leadership isn't measured by what passengers can see. It's measured by what an airline can consistently deliver.
That distinction is now even more pertinent.. According to McKinsey, modern airline retailing could unlock up to $45 billion in additional industry value by 2030, while IATA continues to position airline retailing as one of the industry's most significant transformation opportunities.
At the same time, 73% of passengers now book directly through airline websites or mobile apps, making an airline's own digital channels more commercially important than ever.
Perhaps it's time we stopped asking which airlines look the most digital and started asking what digital leadership looks like in practice.
Why "Best in Digital" Is Still Too Vague
For years, "digital transformation" has been one of aviation's favourite phrases. Today, AI joined the conversation.
The challenge is that both terms are often used without a shared definition.
An airline may launch a redesigned website, release a new mobile app, or introduce an AI-powered assistant. These are positive developments, but they don't automatically make the organisation digitally mature. Too often, digital success is measured by visible outputs rather than meaningful outcomes.
Passengers don't choose an airline because it has AI.
They choose it because they can easily find the right flight, understand their options, complete a booking without unnecessary friction, manage their journey, receive relevant offers, and resolve problems when something goes wrong.
Technology is simply an enabler. The outcome is what matters.
Recent consumer research reinforces this point. While price remains an important purchasing factor, travellers increasingly value convenience, flexibility and simplicity throughout the journey. 78% of passengers say they want a single digital identity combining travel documents, loyalty information and payment details, showing how customers increasingly reward seamless experiences rather than standalone digital features.
Digital maturity, therefore, isn't about offering more features. It's about delivering a better experience.
Four Characteristics of Airlines That Lead in Digital
Although every airline faces different commercial realities, the organisations making the greatest progress tend to share four common characteristics.
1. They Remove Friction Rather Than Add Features
The strongest digital experiences begin with customer needs rather than technology.
Passengers don't think in terms of booking engines, servicing platforms, or loyalty systems. They simply expect every interaction to feel connected, intuitive, and effortless, regardless of whether they're booking a flight, purchasing baggage, checking in or making a schedule change.
This is where AI has the potential to fundamentally reshape the customer's journey.
As Ursula Silling, CEO of Branchspace, noted during this year's IATA AGM, travellers don't begin their journey by knowing which flight they want. They begin with an idea of the trip they want to take. They want to understand the total cost of their journey, compare options, and make informed decisions from the very start. AI makes it possible to support customers much earlier in that journey, helping them discover destinations, understand the full cost of travel, and receive more relevant recommendations before they've even selected a flight.
"Technology is not the limit anymore." - Ursula Silling, CEO, Branchspace
Leading airlines constantly ask themselves simple questions:
- Can customers find the right flight quickly?
- Can they complete a booking with confidence?
- Can they continue their journey seamlessly across web, mobile and airport touchpoints?
Every unnecessary click, repeated data entry or disconnected experience creates friction. Every improvement that removes that friction builds trust, satisfaction and ultimately loyalty.
Digital excellence isn't achieved by adding more functionality.
It's achieved by making every interaction simpler.
2. They Measure Commercial Outcomes, Not Digital Outputs
Digital channels should never be viewed as standalone customer touchpoints.
They are now one of the airline's most important commercial engines.
The strongest airlines don't celebrate app downloads or website traffic in isolation. Instead, they measure whether digital investment contributes to meaningful business outcomes such as higher conversion, increased ancillary revenue, stronger direct distribution, improved loyalty engagement, and greater operational efficiency.
This reflects the industry's wider transition towards Modern Airline Retailing. Digital channels are evolving from transactional platforms into intelligent retail environments capable of presenting more relevant offers, supporting dynamic merchandising and continuously optimising commercial performance.
The commercial opportunity is significant. For some airlines, ancillary products now generate more than half of total revenue. Frontier leads at 62%, followed by Spirit (58.7%) and Volaris (55.3%), highlighting how digital retailing has become a core commercial capability.
Success is no longer measured by how attractive a digital experience appears.
It's measured by the value it creates.
3. They Invest in Organisational Capability, Not Just Customer Interfaces
One of the biggest misconceptions in digital transformation is that success depends primarily on customer-facing technology. Beautiful interfaces can only deliver limited value if the organisation behind them struggles to evolve.
Many airlines continue to face fragmented systems, siloed teams, inconsistent data, and lengthy delivery cycles. These challenges make innovation slower, experimentation more difficult, and personalisation harder to achieve.
This was one of the strongest messages to emerge from this year's IATA AGM. Across multiple sessions, industry leaders highlighted that AI is only as effective as the data, systems and operating model behind it. Without connected data and integrated technology, AI simply reinforces existing silos rather than helping airlines overcome them.
Increasingly, airlines are moving away from large monolithic transformation programmes towards modular capabilities that can evolve incrementally. This enables organisations to introduce new technologies, including AI, while delivering measurable business value sooner rather than waiting years for complete technology replacement.
The airlines making the greatest progress recognise that digital transformation extends well beyond customer experience. It requires investment in operating models, architecture, delivery practices, integration, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration.
These capabilities rarely receive headlines.
They are, however, the capabilities that create lasting competitive advantages.
4. They Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Perhaps the biggest difference between digitally mature airlines, and everyone else is the mindset.
Digital leadership isn't a destination.
It's an organisational capability built through continuous learning.
The strongest teams test new ideas, measure performance, understand customer behaviour and iterate continuously. Rather than waiting years for a perfect future-state solution, they improve incrementally, creating momentum while reducing delivery risk.
This is where AI becomes genuinely transformative.
Not because it replaces human decision-making, but because it accelerates learning.
AI can identify customer patterns faster, personalise experiences more effectively, optimise merchandising decisions, improve disruption management and reduce repetitive work. However, its greatest value comes when embedded within organisations that already know how to experiment, learn, and improve.
AI doesn't replace continuous improvement.
It amplifies it.
Where AI Actually Fits
Much of today's conversation suggests that AI represents a new digital strategy.
It doesn't.
At this year's IATA AGM, one message came through consistently. AI is no longer the strategy itself. It's becoming another capability that airlines need to embed across retailing, operations, and customer service.
Technology is no longer a limiting factor.
The challenge is understanding where AI genuinely improves customer outcomes and commercial performance.
Used well, AI enables airlines to deliver more relevant offers, provide faster customer support, improve operational decision-making, automate routine processes, and increase productivity across multiple teams.
Industry adoption is accelerating rapidly, but customer expectations remain grounded. 88% of passengers say real-time baggage tracking increases confidence when travelling, illustrating that customers continue to value practical, friction-reducing digital experiences above technology for its own sake.
This is an important distinction. The airlines creating the greatest value won't necessarily be those deploying the most AI tools.
They'll be the ones applying AI to solve meaningful customer and business problems.
As AI becomes embedded across more airline processes, governance also becomes increasingly important. Trust, transparency, and human oversight will determine whether AI creates long-term value. Digital maturity is therefore not about adopting AI. It's about deploying it responsibly, supported by high-quality data, clear governance and organisations capable of acting on AI-driven insights with confidence.
A Better Benchmark for Airline Digital Leadership
So, what does it actually mean to be the best in digital and AI?
Perhaps the answer is surprisingly simple.
The best airlines are those that combine strong digital fundamentals with practical AI applications to create better customer outcomes and stronger business performance.
That means asking different questions:
- Are we making the customer journey genuinely easier?
- Is digital improving commercial performance?
- Can our organisation adapt and deliver improvements quickly?
- Are we using AI to strengthen existing capabilities rather than simply showcasing new technology?
These questions are considerably more demanding than asking whether an airline has launched an AI assistant or redesigned its website.
They're also far more valuable.
Because they focus on organisational capability rather than technological visibility.
Looking Beyond the Hype
Airlines have never had more technology available. AI will continue to evolve as customer expectations continue to rise. Retailing models will become increasingly intelligent, and new technologies will emerge faster than ever before.
As Nikhil Ravishankar, Chief Digital Officer at Air New Zealand, remarked during the IATA AGM, the next question may not simply be how airlines build experiences that customers love, but how they build brands that future AI travel agents choose to recommend.
"How do you make an AI agent fall in love with your brand?" — Nikhil Ravishankar, Air New Zealand
The question is thought-provoking because it highlights just how profoundly travel discovery and airline retailing may evolve over the coming years.
The airlines that lead the next decade won't simply be those that adopt every innovation first.
They'll be the ones that build organisations capable of continuously adapting to change.
Being the best in digital and AI isn't about having the most impressive technology stack, the most advanced chatbot or the longest list of digital features.
It's about consistently delivering better experiences for customers, better decisions for the business, and better commercial outcomes through continuous learning and improvement.
Ultimately, the future of airline digital leadership won't belong to the airlines that look the most innovative.
It will belong to the ones that become the most adaptable.
