New challenges, new needs
Through the Fly Net Zero 2050 pledge and various other commitments, our industry has set ambitious goals to ensure that flying is sustainable and to achieve net-zero carbon emissions from all airline operations by 2050. This transition to a greener aviation will require new skills, both in the shape of new emerging occupations and changes in needs for existing occupations. These new, ‘green skills’ have been defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) as “the skills needed by the workforce, in all sectors and at all levels, in order to help the adaptation of products, services and processes to the transformations due to climate change and to environmental requirements and regulations”.
Recognising the need for these new skills and investing in developing them now is essential to the success of our Net Zero ambitions. They will indeed be required to develop new sustainable technologies, apply new practices in operations and logistics, understand and implement new green policies, anticipate risks linked to climate change, and manage resources etc.
What green skills will be required?
To better understand what specific green skills will be required across the industry, it is important to understand the impact our activities have on the environment at the local, regional and global scale and how we can mitigate risks. Conversely, we also need to evaluate the effects that environmental and social context might have on our activities in the short and long term.
The types of green skills that might be called for are:
- Digital skills: invest in ML, AI, Big Data capabilities to support decision-making activities.
- New Technical skills: investing in R&D, developing alternative fuel expertise, building green aerospace engineering capabilities etc.
- Resource Management skills: looking at new types of resources, introducing circular economy practices etc.
- Communication skills: managing internal and external stakeholders’ expectations through authentic and transparent communication.
- Cognitive skills such as creative thinking, analytical thinking, design thinking, critical thinking, etc. which reflect the increasing importance of complex problem-solving and need for adaptability.
It is no coincidence if according the WEF 2023 Future of Jobs report “the fastest-growing roles relative to their size today are driven by technology, digitalization and sustainability”.
Upskilling the aviation industry
Building up green skills will require new training programmes and new qualification frameworks. Some existing roles and responsibilities are likely to evolve while new ones will be created.
It is important for companies to assess their future needs in green skills now and start building relevant training, upskilling and hiring strategies.
Some initiatives aimed at developing green skills in aviation have already been launched, like IATA’s Integrated Sustainability Program (ISP), including their Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) which aim at guiding stakeholders in improving performance, demonstrating accountability, and achieving meaningful impact aligned with industry best practices.
But the success of aviation’s green transition will also require a close collaboration between policy makers, industry stakeholders and educational institutions. Initiatives such as Wisa at the University of Waterloo, Canada, pave the way for such partnerships.
The Path Forward
As our industry adapts to climate change and the new challenges it brings, our workforce will also need to adapt and build up appropriate skills, no matter which part of aviation we operate in.
“Even jobs in sectors not directly affected by the green transition will need to incorporate relevant transversal skills such as environmental awareness and sustainability.” – OECD, 2023.
At Branchspace we have made ‘People and Planet’ one of our core strategic values and are always looking for like-minded people to join the team and help build our vision for a more sustainable aviation.
If you are interested in joining us on this journey, please get in touch: https://www.branchspace.com/careers
Sources:
OECD (2023), Assessing and Anticipating Skills for the Green Transition: Unlocking Talent for a Sustainable Future, Getting Skills Right, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/28fa0bb5-en.
https://logistics.org.uk/campaigns
https://uwaterloo.ca/sustainable-aeronautics/about-wisa
https://www.iata.org/en/services/certification/environment-sustainability/environmental-assessment/
https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf
The average airline web portals is not broken. It loads, it sells tickets. It technically does what it's supposed to do.
And yet, the experience feels tiring.
You notice it when you try to do something simple. Change a seat. Find your gate. Understand what happens if a flight is delayed. Suddenly you are scanning long pages, decoding airline terminology, clicking back and forth just to stay oriented.
The problem is not with the features, It is effort effort required in getting from A to B.
Airline portals still expect travellers to think like systems. To understand menus, categories, fare families, ancillaries, rules. But travellers arrive with something much simpler. Intent.
They want to get something done and get on with their journey.
This article posits that airline web portals should stop behaving like navigation systems and start acting as intent-aware decision environments. When UX is designed to reduce effort, adapt to context, and quietly support travellers at each stage of the journey, portals become calmer to use, easier to trust, and far more effective for airlines.
The basics still matter more than airlines think
Before talking about AI or personalisation, it is worth being honest about the fundamentals.
You can see that accessibility standards aren’t yet being applied and portals aren’t optimised for mobile, which results in performance drops. Navigation feels heavier than it needs to be. Search often works, but only if you already know what to ask and how the airline expects you to ask it.
These are not exciting topics, but they shape everything that comes after. If a portal is slow, confusing, or inaccessible, no amount of intelligence layered on top will fix the experience.
At Branchspace, we see this repeatedly. Airlines want to move faster, personalise more, experiment. But the UX foundation is not always ready to support that ambition.
Where portals lose traveller trust
The biggest UX issues are rarely dramatic, they are subtle and cumulative:
- A vague error message that offers no next step
- A long paragraph that hides the one thing the traveller needs to know
- Three different words for the same concept depending on where you are in the journey
- A mobile page that technically works but feels endless
In isolation these are small instances, but they compound to create friction for a user. And friction erodes confidence.
Travellers begin to hesitate, scan more carefully, and spend extra effort just trying to stay oriented. They stop trusting that the portal will help them when things go wrong. Good UX goes beyond delight, it is about reassurance.
Decision-making is the real job of UX
Every airline portal is a decision-making environment:
- Choose a flight
- Choose a fare
- Choose a seat
- Decide whether to rebook or wait
The role of UX is not to present all options equally. It is to reduce the mental work required to choose well.
That is where simple principles matter more than flashy ideas: clear visual hierarchy, familiar patterns, plain language, and progressive disclosure.
When these are done properly, travellers stop analysing the interface and start moving confidently through it.
This is also where intent-led thinking becomes powerful. When portals are designed around tasks rather than pages, complexity begins to fall away naturally.
What changes when you design for intent
When you stop designing for navigation and start designing for intent, the portal behaves differently:
- Shift the focus to intent and the portal begins to respond in new ways
- Search leads the experience rather than sitting in the background
- Logged-in travellers with an upcoming trip see what they can do next, instead of being asked to explore
This is the direction we have been taking with platforms like Triplake by allowing the portal to respond to context, trip stage, loyalty status and behaviour.
Where AI actually helps and where it should stay quiet
AI has a role in airline UX, but it works best when it stays in the background rather than taking centre stage. The strongest AI-driven experiences are often the ones you barely notice, because the interface feels simpler and the path forward feels clearer.
That might mean routing a traveller straight to the right outcome based on a natural language query, or surfacing the most relevant rebooking option when a disruption occurs. In other moments, it is about removing repetition altogether, using known preferences to spare travellers from making the same choices again and again.
At its best, AI offers clarity, supports decisions without trying to make them on the traveller’s behalf. People still want to feel in control of their journey, they just do not want to work so hard to get there.
The portal is becoming a living interface
The most interesting shift we are seeing has very little to do with technology and everything to do with behaviour. Airline portals are gradually moving away from being static websites and towards adaptive interfaces that respond to where a traveller is in their journey.
Before the trip, the portal helps you prepare. On the day of travel, it shifts into a supportive role, surfacing the information that matters most in the moment. Afterwards, it follows up, closing the loop rather than simply ending the experience.
Making this work demands modular design systems, flexible platforms, and teams that think beyond individual pages and flows. It is not an easy change, but it is both achievable and increasingly necessary.
