Deepak is the Managing Architect at Branchspace, where he plays a key role in driving digital transformation for the airline industry. With extensive expertise in digital product design, Deepak has helped organizations build efficient operating models for their digital products, from conceptualization to delivery.
Could you tell us a bit about your background, and what drew you to join Branchspace?
My background is in functional and technical architecture, and more broadly, enterprise architecture. I started my career in product development and consulting with Oracle and IBM, working on their CRM and ERP systems. My first experience in the airline domain came when I designed and delivered an NDC aggregation platform for a client. Shortly after that, the opportunity at Branchspace came along. It was a lucky surprise, and I’m glad I took the leap. The work here is both exciting and challenging, especially given the complex consulting assignments we handle. The depth of expertise within Branchspace is truly inspiring, and that has made my experience here enriching.
How has your experience been working with us? How would you describe the culture and vision of Branchspace?
Branchspace has been an inspiring place to work. Our assignments are broad and challenging, often with tight timelines, but the collaborative culture makes everything manageable. What stands out is the wealth of expertise within the team—many of my colleagues have decades of experience in the airline industry. Typically, they bring not only general airline expertise, but also deep knowledge of the specific airline projects we are working on. The collaborative environment means that you can always reach out for guidance, making even the most complex projects easier to navigate.
Airlines are increasingly turning to digital solutions to enhance their retailing strategies. What do you see as the most significant trends driving this digital transformation in the airline industry right now?
The biggest change is that airlines are rethinking and realigning their sales and servicing channels to match where the industry is headed. Almost every airline I know is working on multiple projects to achieve this. It's not just about NDC—though that is a significant part of it—but about creating cross-channel retailing strategies that introduce standardized and personalized retailing services across all touchpoints.
This transformation is also driving a review of the digital systems underpinning these channels. Airlines are shifting toward order management solutions, revamping product definitions, adding richer content, introducing context-sensitive pricing, and optimizing their partnerships in code-sharing and interlining. Another key area is modern payment solutions, ensuring that customers have access to the latest and most convenient payment options. IATA's standards and initiatives also play a crucial role in shaping these transformations.
What are some of the most common challenges airlines face with their retailing platforms, and how can they overcome these challenges?
The biggest challenge lies in the legacy functional models that airlines still operate under. Traditional ticketing and travel systems were built to support older models that don’t align with modern retailing experiences. To truly transform, airlines need to rethink their entire product lifecycle while upgrading their systems.
Another challenge is data utilization. While airlines have access to vast amounts of data, they must leverage AI and advanced analytics to provide better pricing and personalization. One example from a project I’m working on is using offer data streams to refine pricing strategies for ancillaries. Airlines used to focus on order data, but now they have a much richer dataset of offers to analyze.
The solution? A strategic approach to transformation. Airlines should start by asking: What data do we have? What data do we need? What data are we generating? Future-proofing these transformations means building solutions that can handle increasing data volumes and evolving customer expectations.
We emphasize an API-first approach in product development. How does this benefit airlines looking to create more agile and scalable digital retail solutions? Could you give an example of how our API-first strategy has worked in a project?
Every modern solution should be designed with an API-first approach. This ensures that even if a system doesn’t have a traditional UI, it still has well-defined API structures that make integration seamless.
A great example is the NDC aggregator platform I mentioned earlier. Instead of just focusing on building an aggregator, we approached it as a product, designing its API set first. We used GraphQL to create a structured, scalable API framework, allowing different parts of the organization to access relevant data easily. This approach not only accelerated development but also ensured consistency across web interfaces, mobile applications, and third-party integrations.
What are the key elements airlines need to focus on when building a digital platform from the ground up? Are there specific technologies or frameworks you recommend for a robust, future-proof system?
The list of technologies is long, but before choosing specific tools, airlines should keep an open mind about adopting new solutions. Familiar technologies may not always be the best fit for modern cloud-based architectures. A few key considerations include:
- API Strategy: Invest in API-driven development and select a scalable API platform to facilitate collaboration and faster development cycles.
- Cloud Adoption: Consider managed cloud services to reduce operational overhead, even if they appear costlier upfront. These services offer scalability and reliability.
- Frameworks & Languages: Airlines should pick primary development languages like Java or TypeScript, a secondary high-performance language, and a third one for data and automation.
- Serverless & Event-Driven Architectures: Frameworks like AWS Copilot and Serverless simplify API and function-as-a-service development.
- Managed Services: Leveraging cloud-native services for database management, AI, and analytics can streamline operations and improve efficiency.
Ultimately, airlines need to evaluate their technology choices carefully and stay agile in their approach to digital transformation.
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.
