In 2021, IATA member airlines committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a historic pledge aligning aviation with the Paris Agreement's goals. Fast-forward to the inaugural IATA World Sustainability Symposium (IATA WSS) in 2023, held in Madrid, where industry leaders, regulators, researchers, and various stakeholders gathered to address this great challenge.
The event spotlighted not only environmental impact and carbon footprint but also corporate social responsibility. It’s true that aviation is facing challenges such as environmental impact, personnel shortages, and staying technologically competitive. However, the general feeling is that through collaboration across the supply chain, it’s possible to tackle these issues.
A great challenge lies ahead
Airlines know it is going to be challenging and costly to tackle decarbonisation. However, nobody is denying what science has been alerting us to. The aviation industry recognises its negative impacts on the environment and is ready to implement the necessary changes to be part of the transition into a carbon-neutral world. The CEO roundtable that marked the beginning of the event underscored that aviation's key players are not only involved but also deeply committed.
Decarbonization is a globally recognized imperative.
— Filip Cornelis, Director for Aviation in the European Commission
To make this ambitious goal a reality, numerous airlines, and major industry stakeholders have developed their roadmaps, complete with secondary targets, such as a percentage emission reduction by 2030 and 2035. Nevertheless, it is essential to acknowledge that achieving the 2050 targets will be a long journey. This is not the first crisis the aviation industry is facing, but it presents a great opportunity to reinvent the travel experience for both us and the future generations.
Collaboration is key
The key word of the WSS was “collaboration”. There is a sincere will to implement changes across the industry, but everyone also recognises that this will be impossible without a true collaboration of all industry stakeholders. Therefore, there is a need for a systemic approach to these sustainability challenges.
Management decisions need to consider all factors to avoid unintended consequences. For instance, the adoption of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) must consider its potential impact on local food production and poverty levels. Similarly, an airline's efforts to reduce plastic usage in catering services must be evaluated in the broader context of supply chain emissions.
Geographical disparities add another layer of complexity. Regulations, public awareness, climate change impact, and energy production vary significantly from region to region. These differences require tailored strategies and collaboration. A holistic approach to the problem of decarbonisation is essential, and the industry will only be able to achieve its objectives if all actors work together.
Hear it from us
For the first time, aviation industry key stakeholders got together to have essential conversations around sustainability and how to transform the industry in the coming years, and it is clear that everyone is taking this challenge very seriously. The industry has come under great scrutiny in recent years with regard to its impact on climate change. Talking to fellow participants at the WSS I could tell there is a sincere will across the industry to implement changes and take action.
Although technology and concepts such as 'digital footprint' were not top of the agenda for this first edition of the WSS, I am convinced technology partners like Branchspace also have a key role to play in the sustainable transition of the travel industry and I look forward to digging deeper into this topic in the near future based on the work and conversations started in Madrid.
— Alicia Bulbeck, Operations Manager at Branchspace
Sustainable Aviation Fuels
One of the focal points of the discussions at IATA WSS revolved around Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) and their role in the industry's journey towards sustainability. While SAFs aren't viewed as a silver bullet solution, they emerge as the most effective means to reduce airline CO2 emissions in the short to midterm, with minimal disruption to operations.
The complexity of legislation
There are still a lot of contradictory rules and numerous legal barriers across the industry, especially when it comes to intercontinental flights or international operations.
One clear example is the issue of waste management, where EU-based airlines face a complex situation. They are obliged to incinerate food waste from outside the EU, but when it comes to waste originating from EU countries, the rule takes a different shape. These regulatory disparities not only confound airlines but also expose the pressing need for international harmony in laws governing the industry.
In the pursuit of net-zero, a consistent policy framework becomes imperative. The transition to a more sustainable aviation sector cannot rely solely on voluntary commitments. It calls for an internationally coordinated effort that sets rigorous standards to ensure investments align with genuine sustainability projects.
The use of technology
In the pursuit for sustainable aviation, data analytics plays a pivotal role. Airlines worldwide are increasingly focusing on reducing their carbon emissions, and to keep track of their efforts, data-driven solutions have become indispensable. IATA has been at the forefront of developing innovative tools, such as CO2 Connect — an emissions calculator developed with airline data and based on industry approved recommended practises.
The emphasis with such tools or solutions is on transparency, accuracy and of course, API integrations, so airlines can integrate the tools into their currentiata wasaoperations. Moreover, reporting is vital. Airlines are keen to engage with their customers and the public in an open and transparent manner.
IATA is also developing a net-zero tracking methodology for airlines who want to track their net-zero progress. They are working to create industry standards for reporting and have launched an eco-hub encompassing various areas of sustainability-related services for airlines (CORSIA Centre. CO2 Connect.,Track Zero, Environmental assessments services, Q&A on SAFs etc.).
Everyone has a role to play
The 2023 IATA World Sustainability Symposium marked a historic gathering, uniting industry stakeholders to engage in crucial discussions about aviation's sustainability objectives. This milestone event not only highlighted the profound challenges facing airlines and their partners but also encouraged insightful exchanges on innovative initiatives already in progress. The diversity of attendees, ranging from airlines to environmental non-profit organizations, academics, scientists, technology partners, and aircraft manufacturers, emphasised the industry's collective commitment to achieving the ambitious net-zero emissions target by 2050.
If we were to walk away with a single word, it would be “collaboration.” This event resonated with a clear message: it is clear to everyone in the industry that this challenge needs to be tackled in coordination with other actors, and the most optimistic even dream of cross-disciplinary actions with other industries. Everyone across the supply chain has a role to play in this crisis.
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.
