Facing unprecedented market conditions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, airlines recently decided to relax fare conditions to address travel restrictions introduced by local governments. In most cases, these relaxed fare conditions are temporary and are adjusted from time to time based on the severity of pandemic cases and local government advice. However, long-term uncertainty related to travel, especially during summer 2020, may ultimately cause consumers to change plans: under the assumption that ground transport is less risky, most airline customers may decide to spend their vacations this year driving to the countryside or training up the coastline. With the majority of planes still grounded, airlines are facing the ultimate question: when restrictions are lifted, how do you regain customer trust, mitigate uncertainty over future travel conditions and simultaneously get customers on board?
The answer may lie in revamping fare rules for flexibility and developing insurance products to ensure customers have the option to feel their purchase is secure.
Extending flexible fares product
In our previous article, we discussed the issue of a frustrating rebooking and cancellation process. It is indeed a pressing issue for consumers as many airlines have these processes poorly implemented from a user experience perspective, and offer limited self-service rebookings options. While booking flows are sometimes subject to technological limitation, in many cases, it is a business decision to prevent modification to a purchased ticket. Therefore, customers are often doomed to overloaded call centres – especially during massive disruption like Covid-19.
Bringing permanent flexibility to fare rules
Implementing changes to fare structure and policies which introduce greater flexibility in booking modifications could restore consumer confidence in booking trips far in advance.
Before the pandemic, flexibility was one of the most expensive elements of the fare rules and was usually tailored as a product for business travellers. This is no longer the case. Tackling the problem of reluctance requires introducing flexibility across all traveller segments as a basic element of the fare conditions, and with effective price discrimination allowing for affordable prices in lower classes. Extending flexibility products will provide customers with a level of security in case their plans change unexpectedly.
From an airline perspective, cancellation is probably the most controversial service. In many cases, there is no simple online option for cancellation, or, when there is an option, the refund process is fully manual and tedious for customers. There are often both technological and business-related obstacles to expanding cancellation options. The former is caused by a complex process hailing from outdated, legacy reservation platforms. In the latter, removing the online cancellation option and pushing through offline channels can deter customers from making refund requests.
However, to offer a truly customer-first cancellation service and stabilise cash flow, airlines could provide an incentive plan for handling involuntarily cancelled flights. Customers purchasing cheaper (currently inflexible) fares, could be still offered the cancellation option, but only with the refund to voucher or credit account maintained in user profiles. On the other hand, customers who purchased an expensive fare should have the option for a full refund in cash; however, an airline could also further incentivise customers to choose a voucher. Opening up cancellation options will build consumer confidence in airline fair practices, as well as encourage stronger loyalty.
Adding more flexibility through ancillary product development
This relaxation of fare rules can also be applied by a broader and more affordable offering of flexibility fees as both stand-alone ancillary service and as part of the fare bundles. There is also a space for new product development, especially with insurance partners that can also cover consumer’s needs for more protection during times of uncertainty. Insurance products usually require less workload to be implemented in the short term in comparison to completely revamping the entire fare structure and strategy.
Obviously, the downside offering flexibility through insurance products alone is that an airline doesn’t control the claim process and therefore acts only as a merchant, removing their influence on the partner customer care unit. Therefore, a negative experience with an insurance partner will reflect back poorly on the airline’s reputation at the end.
Takeaway
Nowadays, customers require more empathy on the part of airlines, as their future decisions regarding travel will mostly be based on consumer confidence in both being able to fly, and the perception that they are taking less risk in doing so.
If an airline takes the customer-centric approach and shows understanding regarding the change to consumer travel plans, it may pay off. Greater relaxation of the fare rules, not just for Covid-19 restricted times, but also permanently after the pandemic, will decrease customer insecurity regarding air travel in the uncertain future. This relaxation does not necessarily create gaps in revenue for airlines, as this approach would also generate additional revenue from a broad offering of ancillary services tailored to assure that the customer is always protected against unforeseen circumstances. It will also generate sustainable volume if it is not simply an exclusive product, but differentiated across the traveller segments to be affordable for even the most price-sensitive customers. Mitigating uncertainty also presents the opportunity for product development with current insurance partners as customers will most likely seek more protection.
We may assume that this is not the last time we face such massive disruption caused by pandemic disease or other unforeseen circumstances, but by taking steps now to introduce flexibility and protection for customers, airlines and their customers will be better prepared for the next time crisis hits.
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.
