by WAF_Contributor | Jan 5, 2026 | Airlines, Features, Retailing
By Daniel Friedli, Travel in Motion AG
When the Modern Airline Retailing (MAR) programme kicked off in earnest around 2022, it did so with a mix of scepticism, excitement and ambition. Airlines had spent a decade talking about transformation while wrestling with legacy plumbing that persists. The buzz and hype have turned into activity, and progress since then has been unmistakable. Volumes of NDC transactions grew, more carriers began experimenting with Orders and vendors retooled roadmaps. With the creation of the Airline Retailing Consortium and the countless hours airlines, vendors, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and consultancies put into it, the foundations were laid.
As 2026 comes into view, one should not expect a revolution but rather an evolution of deliberate, confident steps. The industry is moving from “proving the concept” to “making it normal”. Below are the areas where that should be most visible.
Airlines: Pragmatism with visible results
Airlines in 2026 are not chasing transformation for the sake of transformation. They are chasing bottom-line improvements, operational predictability and competitive differentiation.
Expect more airlines to announce concrete MAR milestones: full Order pilots in selected channels, retirement of niche legacy flows or live continuous pricing in indirect markets through NDC. Carriers with strong digital DNA and a clear executive-set focus will move faster, but even traditionally conservative players will take meaningful steps driven partly by vendor capability finally catching up, fear of missing out and seeing their partners and competitors making the move. Other factors which will drive decision timelines are expiring passenger service system (PSS) contracts, opportunities to break free from vendor lock-ins and new commercial opportunities.
We will also see airlines get bolder with product differentiation. Rich media, personalised bundles, post-purchase upsell flows and dynamically-created ancillaries will expand as the offer and order management and related systems increase in maturity and reliability. What was previously “demo-ware” will turn into everyday retailing.
Finally, airlines are realising they must treat MAR as an enterprise project with corporate-driven roadmaps, not merely a distribution or technology initiative. We can expect organisational rewiring: commercial, digital, operations and finance working against a coordinated roadmap.
Industry: From advocacy to alignment
The broader ecosystem enters 2026 with more clarity on its role.
Travel in Motion (TiM) believes that IATA’s job should increasingly shift from evangelising to enabling. Standards stabilisation (and please, acceleration), governance frameworks, removing regulatory hurdles and settlement evolution should be core focus areas. We expect progress on interline Order capabilities and clarity on product definition and data alignment.
We expect the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) and the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) to keep nudging the industry towards practical adoption. ARC will optimally expand Order-based settlement pilots, while ATPCO refines the bridge between fare filing and dynamic offer construction, providing structure without stifling innovation.
Meanwhile, airports, travel management companies (TMCs) and global distribution systems (GDSs) must be involved more by the airlines, IATA and the consortium to deepen their integration efforts. Without the buy-in of these key ecosystem players, even the best intended transformation plans will not be executed. Airports must focus on making Order data usable for operational planning with the support of the airport software vendors which usually provide a legacy departure control system (DCS). Furthermore, together with airlines, regulators and tech companies, the use of data and biometrics should be expanded to move towards streamlined airport operations which allow customers to have more dwell time for shopping, dining, working or socialising. The innovative TMCs we should see building richer servicing and duty-of-care flows on top of Orders rather than fighting them. GDSs, already repositioning as multi-source aggregators, will continue modernising back-office processes to handle Orders natively.
Technology: The quiet enabler
Technology’s role in MAR in 2026 will not invent new buzzwords but rather focus on three practical themes: simplification, decoupling and automation.
The decoupling of Offers and Orders will continue to mature. In 2026, expect more airlines and vendors to treat the order management system (OMS) as the new “gravitational centre” of retailing. While not fully independent from the PSS, we should see capability of orchestrating fulfilment, servicing and settlement events across partners. The shift will not be large-scale globally just yet, but pilots will start turning into production-grade rollouts.
Even more exciting is when application programming interface (API) performance and reliability finally become boring. This is good. Airlines that struggled to stabilise NDC APIs in earlier years are now working with vendors to mature and further standardise additional APIs. Vendors are starting to expose more granular services and deploying event-driven architectures which enable better accessibility as well as more automation built by airlines.
We can already see that artificial intelligence (AI) will stop being a sideshow. TiM expects genuine use cases to help airlines tackle tedious daily tasks, helpers to drive additional revenue or intelligence to orchestrate smart customer experience flows. Other examples we may see, aside from flashy prototypes, are automated quality checks on offer construction, anomaly detection in servicing flows or proactive failure alerts for interline Orders. AI will become a mainstay and serve as a tool in the toolbox of offer creation, order management and customer experience.
We believe technology in 2026 is not about breakthroughs; it is about making the plumbing trustworthy enough that commercial teams can implement new features and capabilities with confidence.
Vendors: Convergence and clarity
The vendor landscape has spent the last few years in a curious state of both innovation and identity crisis. In 2026, this stabilises and vendors will have defined more clearly in which space they play across the digital retailing ecosystem.
We expect clearer segmentation. The large PSS providers will double down on refining their hybrid models, supporting legacy EDIFACT and legacy system compatibility while offering progressively stronger and, we hope, modular solutions. Mid-tier tech firms that have been in the airline space for a while, and those that more recently entered with enthusiasm will either consolidate or specialise: offer optimisation, segmentation, merchandising via product catalogue and stock keeper, order orchestration microservices, integrations for interline and codeshare and so on. From TiM’s perspective, we hope to see a few examples of true modularity, and one or two bold purchasing decisions where some of the underdogs get a true chance to shine.
Crucially, vendors will be far more transparent about timelines and capabilities, and they will have to be – now it is about commitment and not selling a dream. After years of marketing roadmaps that overshot reality, 2026 brings a more grounded tone. Airlines will push for and get firmer delivery commitments, better transition planning and more standardised interfaces that reduce custom build cycles.
Another shift, and perhaps an overshoot of optimism on our part: integration costs go down, not because the work is easier, but because more vendors align on IATA schemas, adopt shared tooling, utilise AI helpers and participate in joint reference implementations. Interoperability becomes less aspirational and more contractual.
In 2026, Modern Airline Retailing will not “arrive”, but it will become more of a reality for many airlines. Incremental value will be generated by early adopters of initial modules; the legacy systems will have to loosen their grip. The ecosystem, while still in a hybrid mode this year and for several years to come, starts benefiting from the removal of legacy concepts and the use of modern architecture and technology. Progress will be uneven but unmistakably forward.
If the past four years were about proving the value of MAR, 2026 is the year the industry starts extracting that value. Perhaps not yet at scale, but steady drops also fill a bucket.
Join us at Aviation Festival Asia 2026 to discuss the future of modern airline retailing.
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by WAF_Contributor | Nov 13, 2025 | Airlines, News, Retailing
By Matthias Viehmann, Travel in Motion AG
The airline industry is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in decades. The shift toward Modern Airline Retailing (MAR) is no longer a distant vision—it’s happening now. For years, the transition to Offers and Orders has been discussed, but the pace has accelerated. Airlines have started the transition from legacy Passenger Service Systems (PSS) to modern Offer-Order Management Systems (OOMS) to enable dynamic, personalised retailing.
The transition has profound implications for Revenue Management (RM). Retailing enables dynamic, context-specific offers and a more granular trip-specific customer segmentation. To support this, RM must evolve from managing static fare classes to dynamic offer optimisation, including real-time offer curation and contextualised pricing.
Traditional RM: From enabler to obstacle
For decades, Revenue Management (RM) has been the backbone of airline profitability— managing inventories to balance supply and demand while leveraging customers’ willingness-to-pay. This was achieved through forecasting class-based demand and optimising booking class availability. Historically, these mechanisms worked well to segment demand and differentiate products and prices, but today they limit airlines from creating customer-centric, journey-specific offers. Other industries have long surpassed airlines in modern e-commerce capabilities.
Retailing-friendly RM: What will it take?
Separate product from price
As booking classes and filed fares will become obsolete, airlines gain the freedom to dynamically bundle flights and ancillary services in context-specific offers, and to price them without being constrained to specific price points. Modern product management must evolve to manage components and bundling logic, rather than relying on pre-defined static bundles.
Without classes and filed fares, prices must be optimised for dynamic bundles and à-la-carte ancillaries. Forecasting and optimisation models need to handle contextualisation and dynamic bundle construction. Real-time pricing modules are essential—offline pre-calculation will no longer suffice in such a dynamic world.
Balance “the new” supply and demand for price optimisation
Despite changes to product and price, RM still needs to balance supply and demand and optimise the passenger mix. The optimised price must reflect capacity constraints, whether for seats or limited supplies of certain ancillary services.
Solutions will still need to determine the opportunity cost of the next unit, or, as revenue managers call it, the bid price. The logic extends from seats to capacity-constrained ancillaries. In the future, opportunity cost needs to additionally reflect post-booking ancillary sales of potential future customers and marginal cost of items offered.
Price optimisation will split into two components:
- a capacity-centric view to determine opportunity cost for seats and capacity-constrained ancillary services, and
- a customer-centric view to build and price contextualized dynamic offers.
While the former averages across all demand segments for a resource and can run offline, the latter requires evaluating customer, request, and market context in real-time. As offer creation moves from distribution partners to the airlines, processing requests in real time with high shopping volumes, e.g., from meta-searchers, becomes a challenge that must be addressed for any new-generation price optimization to scale.
Up-level demand forecasting models
Forecasting demand at increasingly granular levels has always been challenging, also for analysts to comprehending, validating, and influencing system forecasts. As demand segmentation becomes more detailed and context-driven in the new world, this will become even more pronounced. Splitting price optimisation into a capacity and customer perspective might allow forecasters and analysts to work on natural aggregates, i.e., leg-level and market-level demand.
Estimating market demand needs to evolve from discrete demand across classes to segment-specific class-less willingness-to-pay (WTP) distributions. This eliminates the restriction of 26 letters of the alphabet and allows unlimited price points.
Adopt a new view of willingness-to-pay and elasticity
While airlines have extensive experience in pricing airfare bundles, dynamic pricing for ancillaries is particularly challenging due to limited historical variability. Techniques such as reinforcement learning can help generate the necessary data while simultaneously exploiting customers’ willingness-to-pay. The potential revenue and profit uplifts justify the effort. Several airlines have reported double-digit uplifts when dynamically pricing ancillaries.
Pricing dynamic bundles is still being researched in the scientific and industry communities. Historically, estimating cross-price elasticities from booking data was virtually unfeasible. Dynamically adding components to bundles and optimising contextualised prices requires addressing cross-elasticities. Additionally, bundle and ancillary prices need to be consistent to avoid confusing customers. For example, a superior bundle including an additional ancillary must not be more expensive than an inferior bundle with the ancillary offered à-la-carte. Improved solutions will capitalise on advances in machine learning, combined with a stronger data foundation moving from traditional bookings to Orders consolidating all purchase information.
Additional data streams, such as competitive insights or shopping sessions, can now be integrated to optimise offers. New data sources will emerge in the future, and solutions must be flexible to incorporate them with limited effort. For example, ski resorts in Switzerland and Austria already today factor in weather forecasts to dynamically price ski passes.
Prepare for organisational changes
The change beyond technology is not to be underestimated. Revenue managers have long thought in terms of controlling the availability of static fares supplied by pricing managers. Pricing has been structured around fares and fare ladders for decades. Ancillary services are usually handled separately from flights. Moving to Modern Airline Retailing will require rethinking organisations and redesigning established processes to break down siloed decision-making into a holistic market/customer perspective and a capacity/flight perspective. This split also helps re-define clear-cut responsibilities in the organisation.
The way forward
While the potential is enormous—with the promise to drive profits and customer loyalty—the transformation process is, without a doubt, complex and challenging. Luckily, vendors and front-running airlines have already developed promising solutions. Airline leaders must start the transition and follow a stepwise approach as systems become available and more sophisticated.
Progress is already happening, at an accelerated pace year over year. For example, continuous pricing is already practiced by many airlines; solutions are available from various vendors. Even with legacy PSS and RM systems, simple interpolation between filed fares is a starting point. Once solutions are capable of determining an optimal price point, discounting filed fares based on context is the next step.
Sequentially, class-less forecasting and optimisation models will replace legacy RM and pave the road to offers in the absence of filed fares. In parallel, modules for ancillary services can be deployed to gain experience and benefit from uplift potential.
Airlines starting the transition on the IT side need to address organizational changes in parallel and can gain valuable experience with newly designed processes.
During the transition, one more challenge will persist for quite some time: airline and distribution partners might not move as fast and still require legacy processes requiring translation layers connecting the old and new world.
In summary, the future of Revenue Management will be a fascinating, complex, and (sometimes) messy process as our industry continues its journey toward MAR.
Join us at World Aviation Festival 2026 to discuss the ongoing transition to Offers and Orders.
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by WAF_Contributor | Oct 16, 2025 | Features, Retailing
The airline industry is at a pivotal crossroads. For decades, the sector has relied on filed fare structures to power distribution and retailing. However, with customer expectations evolving and new retailing models and technology enabling dynamic offer creation emerging, one question stands out: how can airlines keep up with change without breaking the systems that keep the industry running?
The answer lies in product catalogue—a standardised, interoperable, and scalable way to define, manage, and share airline products across the ecosystem. ATPCO’s new white paper, From vision to reality: Bridging the future with ATPCO’s Product Catalogue solution, explores how this framework is transforming airline retailing and why it’s essential for the move to a world of offers and orders.
Why product catalogue is essential
Think of product catalog as the missing link between legacy systems and the future of dynamic retailing. It separates product from price, creating a central repository for all airline products, from seats and ancillaries to bundles and services, while allowing airlines to price dynamically at the point of shopping.
This unlocks a range of critical benefits:
- Scalability: Airlines can transition from static fares to dynamic offers at their own pace, without disrupting operations.
- Interoperability: Seamless data exchange ensures that airlines, technology providers, and partners can collaborate efficiently even if they’re at different stages of adoption.
- Modularity: A plug-and-play framework makes it easy to integrate preferred providers and adapt quickly to change.
- Flexibility: Products can be modified without costly overhauls or downtime.
- Trust and Reliability: Built on ATPCO’s role as a neutral, industry-standard provider, ATPCO’s Product Catalog ensures stability and long-term sustainability
Moving to dynamic offers
One of the most powerful aspects of product catalogue is how it enables airlines to benefit from dynamic offers today, even before industry-wide adoption of offers and orders. Instead of waiting for the entire industry to catch up, airlines can start optimising retailing strategies right now through:
- Optimised offers: Enhance predefined products with precision.
- Adjusted offers: Add bundles or tailor products dynamically.
- Continuous offers: Assemble personalized offers in real time.
By centralising product data, product catalog ensures that airlines can adapt quickly while maintaining backward compatibility with filed data. In short, it’s the bridge that connects tradition with transformation.
Proven in practice: Real use cases
This isn’t just theory. ATPCO and its partners are already demonstrating the power of product catalog in action. The white paper highlights six real-world use cases, including:
- Turning filed fare data into a structured product catalog
- Enabling cross-vendor interoperability for dynamic offer creation
- Creating dynamic ancillary bundles to optimise customer experience
- Moving settlement to the time of offer creation
- Embedding the catalog directly in offer creation workflows
- Improving NDC and dynamic offer requests with tailored airline profiles
Each case proves the adaptability, scalability, and revenue potential of product catalog.
All the insights, one white paper
The move to dynamic retailing isn’t a distant vision, it’s happening now. Airlines that act early will not only unlock new revenue streams but also ensure they remain competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
ATPCO’s Product Catalog provides a trusted, standardised foundation for the journey, built with industry-wide collaboration and designed for interoperability. Whether you’re just beginning to explore dynamic offers or are already deep into adoption, this white paper offers essential insights and practical examples to guide your next step.
👉 Don’t get left behind. Download the white paper today and see how ATPCO’s Product Catalog solution can help you take vision to reality.
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by WAF_Contributor | Oct 15, 2025 | Airlines, Airports, Features
By Peter Slater, CEO, CMAC Group
Flight disruption for UK air passengers has surged by almost 40% since 2023, according to new independent research from transport and aviation disruption management company, CMAC Group.
Conducted in September 2025, the national survey of 1,100 UK travellers highlights flight interruptions as an escalating challenge, with impacts on passengers that are both personal and logistical.
A third of travellers said they experienced heightened stress as a result of flight delays and cancellations, with one in four losing sleep and one in eight missing valuable holiday time. For business travellers, the costs were measured not just in hours but in opportunities: more than 30% missed important meetings and 12% reported that client relationships had been strained.
Causes of disruption and the expectation gap
Passengers identified technical issues (46%), industrial action (38%) and severe weather (36%) as leading factors behind travel interruptions. These are not isolated incidents but signs of deeper structural challenges: fragile technical systems, persistent labour disputes across Europe and increasingly severe weather patterns. Each carries financial and reputational costs and together they have made delays and cancellations a permanent part of the operating environment.
As the scale of disruption has expanded, so too have passenger expectations. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said they expect a response within an hour, yet only 42% received it within that timeframe. One in five reported no communication at all.
The resulting expectation gap is fast becoming a fault line for customer loyalty. Airlines that manage to meet the benchmark with speed and transparency can reduce compensation claims, contain reputational fallout and demonstrate reliability.
The digital opportunities
One area where airlines have made tangible progress is the introduction of digital self-service solutions. One in three passengers reported being offered a self-service link during disruption and two-thirds used it. Among those who did, satisfaction levels were high: 87% were happy with the rebooking process and 84% with accommodation arrangements.
These tools are helping to reduce frustration, restore a sense of control and, in many cases, transform what could have been a negative experience into a more manageable one. Yet digital progress does not eliminate the need for empathy: while technology delivers speed and choice, human support delivers reassurance. Although automated rebooking and vouchers can resolve practical problems, a clear explanation from staff or the simple act of acknowledging a passenger’s stress can be decisive in shaping perceptions.
The most effective strategies, therefore, are those that combine technological efficiency with a human touch. Without the operational backbone of reliable supplier networks and trained staff, even the best-designed digital platforms will fail to meet expectations.
Loyalty on the line
Ultimately, disruption has become a defining moment for airlines. It is in these periods of stress, delay and uncertainty that passengers form their strongest impressions of whether a carrier is trustworthy. Encouragingly, the survey shows that progress is being made. Extreme delays are less common, disruption management technology is gaining traction and negative perceptions are in decline. In CMAC Group’s 2023 survey, 41% of passengers expressed negative feelings about airlines after experiencing disruption; by 2025, that figure had fallen to 33%. Likewise, the proportion who said they were less likely to fly with the same airline again dropped from 46% to 29%.
These improvements suggest that when airlines invest in communication and support, passengers are prepared to respond with renewed trust. Yet the stakes remain high, particularly among younger travellers who are both more demanding and less forgiving of poor service.
From turbulence to trust
The lesson is clear: disruption is now aviation’s defining challenge. What matters most is how airlines choose to respond. Passengers aren’t demanding the impossible; they want timely communication and to know their options, within the first hour, and the reassurance that someone is on their side.
Poorly managed disruption erodes trust and drives customers away. Handled well, it can demonstrate reliability and care, turning a potential crisis into a moment that strengthens loyalty. For airlines navigating a competitive landscape, that difference could prove decisive.
Read the full whitepaper for detailed findings and recommendations: Airline Consumer Research Report| CMAC Group
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by WAF_Contributor | Oct 15, 2025 | Digital Transformation, Features
By Julien Desenne, CTO of Moment
The era of slow, unreliable onboard internet access is fading. As satellite technologies mature and providers consolidate, inflight connectivity (IFC) is entering a new phase of reliability and scalability. According to the Viasat Passenger Experience Survey 2024, connectivity now ranks just behind comfort and space as one of the most important expectations for travellers. It is no longer a luxury, but a must!
More than just a service, connectivity is evolving into the digital backbone of the onboard ecosystem, powering entertainment, e-commerce, real-time communication, and personalised loyalty experiences. With the number of connected aircraft skyrocketing worldwide, connectivity isn’t a feature; it’s the nervous system of aviation.
Pursuing a 100% satellite-connected sky: At what risk?
Here’s the catch: the aviation landscape is highly diverse making connectivity choice a complex decision. Airlines vary in needs, operations, and budgets. Offering consistent, high-quality connectivity is far from granted, especially for those with smaller fleets or low-cost business models.
Sure, there’s no shortage of advanced connectivity architectures on the market, whether it’s traditional Air-to-Ground with limited coverage, GEO satellites that boast wide reach but suffer from frustrating latency, or LEO constellations promising high speeds but facing growing cybersecurity concerns. The truth? No single technology can, on its own, deliver the seamless, global connectivity passengers expect.
Leasing satellite bandwidth remains a significant expense for airlines, particularly those investing in LEO connectivity, which also entails high upfront costs and increasing cybersecurity risks. At the same time, onboard data consumption is surging, with no signs of slowing, particularly if locally hosted entertainment were to disappear. The demand for connected services, such as video streaming, online shopping, live sports, and crew communication tools, naturally increases with flight duration. Regulatory barriers are also a major obstacle. In many countries, satellite operators face restrictions – or outright bans – because landing rights, spectrum licenses, or government agreements are missing. As a result, inflight connectivity remains uncertain in several key regions, making truly seamless cross-border coverage hard to guarantee.
The hybrid IFC model: Managing cost with secure performance
As the connectivity boom is pushing industry players to rethink their onboard service strategies, airlines must strike a delicate balance: delivering high-quality service while keeping costs under control and offering products that meet both passenger expectations and business objectives. Deploying IFC across a fleet is resource-intensive, and costly. It requires time, coordination, and a deep understanding of technical and regulatory landscapes. Not all airlines share the same ambition or budget.
Faced with complex choices, the solution lies in a smart blend of embedded systems and satellite connectivity, aligned to both operational and commercial priorities. In this model, satellite bandwidth is reserved for high-value activities such as payment processing, crew communications, or premium services like live sports streaming. Meanwhile, embedded systems store non-critical content locally, including movies, magazines, and product catalogs, significantly reducing bandwidth consumption and ensuring content remains accessible throughout the flight.
On a typical 190-seat narrow-body, a hybrid approach can cut bandwidth demand by up to 80% while still delivering a seamless digital experience. It also lets airlines deploy a fully branded portal—giving passengers a curated interface for services, content, and promotions. Without a dedicated onboard server, internet often arrives as a raw, unbranded connection, missing a prime moment to reinforce the brand and showcase the offer.
Connectivity that works for every flight
Delivering a 100% internet-based experience may be possible for some, but for many operators, it’s not yet sustainable. Connectivity is no longer about simply being online; it’s about managing demand intelligently and designing systems that scale across fleets, regions, and business opportunities.
The future belongs to airlines that embrace flexible, cost-efficient architectures, grounded in embedded technologies. These carriers won’t just meet expectations, they’ll shape them.
Join us at World Aviation Festival 2026 to discuss the future of inflight connectivity.
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by WAF_Contributor | Oct 6, 2025 | Airlines, Features, Payments
For years, airline payments sat quietly in the background. They were treated as plumbing – necessary, but not something leadership would spend much time on. That has shifted. Today, payments influence how customers book, how revenue is captured, and even how airlines compete.
A new whitepaper from Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) looks at this shift in depth. It argues that payments should be considered a strategic function, not just an operational one and that airlines have much to gain from taking a more deliberate approach.
Payments as more than a cost
Margins in aviation are famously slim and payments have not always had much attention. Yet they make up about 2.2% of airline revenues – more than US$22 billion globally. EDC’s analysis suggests those costs can often be trimmed by 10–20% through better acquiring terms and more active management of payments.
The other side of the story is revenue. Payments affect conversion, market reach, and ultimately customer loyalty. Offering local payment methods, providing installment options, or simply ensuring approval rates stay high have a direct impact on sales. In many cases, airlines leave that value untapped.
Where airlines struggle
Based on decades of project work, EDC highlights seven key issues and pain points airlines face as highlighted below.
Seven Key Payment Challenges for Airlines
High acceptance costs, often driven by virtual card processing fees or legacy acquiring contracts, are a key issue for airlines. Another is missed opportunities by not supporting the payment methods customers actually prefer. There are also internal issues. In some airlines, no single team owns payments. Infrastructure has grown in silos, making it hard to innovate quickly. And data, while abundant, is often fragmented. Approval rates, fraud levels, and the true cost of acceptance remain opaque. None of these problems are unique to one region or type of carrier, they crop up across the industry.
The changing environment
It is not just internal complexity that makes payments a pressing topic. The external environment is also moving quickly:
- Customer expectations are shifting, with digital wallets, flexible rebooking, and instalment plans becoming standard in many markets.
- Technology innovation has accelerated, from payment orchestration to contactless check-in and in-flight payments.
- Regulation continues to evolve, whether through PSD3 in Europe, Strong Customer Authentication, or central bank digital currencies.
- And on the provider side, new entrants, models and changing acquirer strategies are reshaping the landscape.
The result is that payments can no longer be managed as a static process. They require ongoing monitoring and adjustment.
What airlines are doing
Case studies in the report underline the significant potential impact of payments. One airline discovered its indirect sales approval rates were running at 50-60%, well below the industry benchmark of 80% or more. Another achieved 10-20% savings by renegotiating acquiring contracts with local providers.
Some carriers are also moving into issuing. AirAsia has embedded a digital wallet into its “super app,” which has supported both refunds and ancillary sales. GOL in Brazil has built co-branded credit card partnerships with several banks, widening reach and boosting loyalty. And Air France-KLM recently worked with Nium on a virtual card solution for B2B payments, cutting costs and easing reconciliation.
These examples suggest payments can do more than trim costs. They can help strengthen loyalty, open new revenue streams, and improve resilience.
The role of governance
One of the clearest messages from the whitepaper is the importance of governance. When no one “owns” payments inside the organisation, projects move slowly and opportunities are missed. Airlines that have introduced a dedicated Head of Payments, backed by a cross-functional governance committee, have seen faster rollouts and better alignment between commercial teams and IT.
Looking ahead
The industry is moving towards modern retailing models such as NDC and Offers & Orders. Payments will be a central part of that transition. Orchestration, stronger data management, and closer links with loyalty schemes are all likely to become standard.
For airlines preparing for 5.2 billion passengers in 2025, even small improvements in payment conversion or cost efficiency matter. A single percentage point can translate into millions of dollars. Payments are no longer background plumbing. They are part of the storefront and Edgar, Dunn & Company would be pleased to assist you capturing all the opportunities related to payments.
Download the full report here: From Plumbing to Storefront: How “Payments” is Changing for Airlines
About Edgar, Dunn & Company
Founded in 1978, Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) is an independent global payments consultancy, advising clients in more than 45 markets each year. EDC’s Travel Payments Practice, established in 2002, works closely with airlines, hotels, OTAs, and payment providers worldwide to design and implement strategies that optimise payments across cost, revenue, and customer experience.
by WAF_Contributor | Oct 3, 2025 | Digital Transformation, Features, Retailing
Data Clarity whitepaper for blog (1)
Read the full report here: Transforming Airline Retail: AI-Driven Flexibility and Precision for Revenue Growth – Data Clarity
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by WAF_Contributor | Oct 1, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Features
We’ve all been there. You’re at the airport, excited for your trip, when a delay flashes on the screen.
For airlines, this is more than just an operational headache. Every disruption creates two crises: one on the tarmac and another online. Passengers rush to apps and websites to rebook, check seat maps, or claim waivers. If those digital flows stall, calls flood into the contact centre, adding costs and compounding frustration.
At airline scale, the stakes are massive: US carriers burn roughly $101 per minute of aircraft block time, and in 2024, 1.4% of all flights were cancelled, each one multiplying the load on digital systems.
When disruption hits, it’s not just about getting planes back on schedule. It’s about understanding the ripple effect on digital systems. Teams scramble to find where rebooking flows are failing or why check-in spikes are overwhelming servers. Too often, this detective work happens after passengers are already frustrated. That is where agentic technology comes in.
Instead of waiting for humans to ask questions like, “Why did check-in conversions drop yesterday?”, agentic AI uses goal-driven agents that proactively analyse data, surface root causes, and prioritize fixes—all automatically. It doesn’t replace teams; it gives them time back to innovate and deliver better passenger experiences.
The agentic revolution in airline digital operations
Agentic AI is about automating analysis, not operations. Airlines already have talented teams monitoring digital booking, check-in, loyalty programs, and payments. But today, those teams spend countless hours manually sifting through data to identify problems and determine what to fix first.
Agentic AI takes this repetitive work off their plate. Agents run continuously, watching KPIs like mobile check-in completions or loyalty logins, surfacing anomalies, and explaining the “why” behind the trend. This enables teams to act faster and smarter, even during the most intense disruption events.
Here’s how it pays off today:
- Proactive disruption insights: When a storm cancels flights, passengers flock to rebooking flows. Agentic AI instantly detects a spike in failed attempts and pinpoints the exact step causing friction — such as a broken voucher code or error-prone page — so the right team can fix it in minutes, not hours. This prevents complaint surges and keeps passengers moving through digital self-service instead of overwhelming call centres.
- Dynamic revenue protection: Airline digital channels aren’t just about service; they’re a critical source of ancillary revenue through upgrades, seat selection, and bag fees. When digital check-in works smoothly, airlines capture this value. But when check-in flows fail, it’s not just frustrating for passengers and frontline staff, increasing costs — it directly impacts the airline revenue. Agentic AI continuously monitors these funnels, explains anomalies (e.g., a failed API or payment gateway issue), and prioritises fixes that recover revenue the same day.
- Digital predictive maintenance: Just as airlines perform scheduled maintenance to keep aircraft operational, agentic AI performs “digital maintenance.” It continuously scans booking, loyalty, and mobile systems for signs of friction, surfacing issues before they affect thousands of customers. Teams that once spent days combing through analytics can now respond in real time, focusing on action instead of investigation.
By automating this layer of analysis, airlines build a smarter, more resilient digital ecosystem that can adapt to disruption at scale.
The digital experience of tomorrow
Today’s passengers treat their phones like remote controls for their journey — from booking flights and upgrading seats to checking gate changes or using biometrics for boarding. In fact, 77% of all digital traffic now comes from mobile devices, yet mobile conversions are down 5% year-over-year. This is a sign that passengers are relying on mobile more than ever, but too often hitting barriers at critical moments.
This shift raises the bar for reliability. When mobile flows fail, trust erodes instantly, and frustrated customers seek human help at the worst possible moments: during delays, cancellations, and peak travel days.
Agentic AI bridges this gap by connecting live operational data to the passenger’s digital journey. Instead of reacting after complaints flood in, airlines gain real-time clarity into where failures are happening and why. This allows them to proactively deliver a more seamless, stress-free passenger experience while easing the workload on frontline staff. Looking ahead: a smarter, more resilient industry.
The aviation industry is at a turning point
As passenger expectations rise and digital touchpoints become the front line of the travel experience, the ability to predict, adapt, and act quickly will define industry leaders.
Agentic AI represents a major leap forward — not because it replaces human decision-making, but because it amplifies the power of teams. By surfacing the most important insights proactively, airlines can:
- Anticipate disruptions before they cascade into chaos.
- Optimise digital journeys to meet passenger expectations.
- Deliver seamless, personalised experiences at scale. Airlines that embrace these innovations today will set the standard for the future of flight, where operational excellence and passenger satisfaction are deeply intertwined.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 30, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, News
In airline operations, tail assignment is often underestimated. At first glance, it seems like a straightforward exercise: matching available aircraft to scheduled flights. But behind this decision lies a highly complex optimisation challenge that impacts costs, reliability, environmental performance, and the passenger experience.
When managed intelligently, tail assignment becomes a strategic lever for operational efficiency and resilience. By assigning the right aircraft to the right flight at the right time, airlines can reduce disruptions, minimise costs, increase the OTP and improve overall performance—all while advancing sustainability objectives.
What is tail assignment and why it matters
Tail assignment is the process of allocating specific aircraft (“tails”) to flights in a schedule. While it may appear as a final step in planning, its consequences are significant. An optimal tail assignment integrates variables such as:
- Maintenance schedules and requirements
- Aircraft fuel efficiency and performance
- Turnaround times and crew pairings
- Passenger bookings and seat configurations
- Operational restrictions (hard and soft)
- Stands and apron distribution at first wave
Misaligned assignments often lead to last-minute swaps, empty ferry flights, crew disruptions, and passenger overbooking issues. The ripple effect is costly—propagating delays across the network and eroding operational performance.
By contrast, a robust tail assignment plan enhances first-wave reliability, minimises irregular operations, and improves fleet utilisation.
The sustainability dimension: Reducing fuel and emissions
In an industry under pressure to decarbonise, tail assignment offers an immediate and practical lever for sustainability. Even within the same fleet, aircraft vary in fuel efficiency. Optimal planning allows airlines to:
– Assign the most efficient aircraft to longer or fuel-intensive routes
– Reduce unnecessary aircraft swaps and avoid suboptimal usage
– Minimise empty repositioning flights
– Contain delay propagation, lowering the fuel penalties of irregular operations
The result is measurable impact: up to 0.5% savings in fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions—an improvement that can translate into millions in annual cost reductions, while also supporting corporate climate commitments.
Smarter overbooking management
Overbooking is a common practice to maximise seat utilization, yet poor alignment with actual aircraft capacity creates denied boardings, compensation costs, and reputational damage. Tail assignment plays a decisive role here.
By matching flights with the aircraft that have the most suitable seat configuration based on expected demand, airlines can reduce overbooking incidents significantly. Small differences—just a few seats between aircraft types—can be the difference between smooth boarding and costly disruptions.
With smarter tail planning, airlines can achieve up to 20% fewer denied boardings, lowering compensation costs while improving passenger satisfaction.
Managing hard and soft constraints
Every schedule must balance two categories of restrictions:
- Hard constraints: non-negotiable rules such as certain maintenance checks, MTOW limits, crew duty limits, or regulatory requirements.
- Soft constraints: preferences or operational efficiencies, such as lack of equipment at certain airports, maintaining crew continuity, or stand allocation preferences.
Optimising tail assignment requires simultaneously respecting all hard constraints while intelligently balancing soft ones. When handled poorly, violations lead to costly chain reactions: aircraft and crew swaps, fuel inefficiencies, propagated delays, and passenger disruptions.
Sophisticated optimisation ensures robust plans that are not only efficient on paper but resilient in practice. Airlines adopting this approach have reported 40% fewer soft constraint violations and 10% fewer crew swaps, strengthening both operational stability and employee satisfaction.
Improving On-Time Performance (OTP)
On-Time Performance (OTP) is a cornerstone of airline reliability, shaping how passengers perceive punctuality and how efficiently operations run throughout the day. Tail assignment has a direct influence on whether flights depart as planned—or whether delays ripple across the network.
One source of disruption arises during the first wave of departures. If two aircraft are parked in adjacent stands with near-simultaneous departure times, their maneuvers can interfere with each other, creating avoidable delays that then propagate across the network. Integrating stand allocation into tail assignment decisions helps minimise these conflicts and strengthens first-wave reliability.
Another common cause of delay propagation comes from tight connections between flights and maintenance activities. When schedules leave insufficient buffer time between a flight’s arrival and the next departure or maintenance task, even a small disruption can snowball into significant knock-on delays. By embedding robustness into tail planning—allowing adequate margins where they matter most—airlines can reduce the likelihood of delay cascades.
Taken together, these optimisations provide a practical pathway to improving OTP, reducing compensation costs, and delivering a more reliable passenger experience.
Quantifiable value
Smarter tail assignment translates directly into measurable business impact through savings. Studies performed by customers and by Cisneria for other airlines demonstrate the following numbers:
- –0.5% Fuel & Emissions
- –20% Passenger Overbookings
- –40% Soft Constraint Violations
- –10% Crew Swaps
- –70% Planning Effort
For airlines with fleets of 100 or 125 aircraft, these results generate over €4M in annual savings. The savings scale with fleet size, demonstrating that tail assignment is more than a mere planning step—it is a lever for both profit and sustainability.
Conclusion
In the face of growing competitive and environmental pressures, airlines cannot afford fragile, reactive planning processes. Tail assignment, when optimised, becomes a high-impact opportunity: reducing costs, improving reliability, enhancing the passenger experience, and contributing to sustainability goals.
Operational leaders—whether in the cockpit, in the operations control center, or in the boardroom—should treat tail assignment not as a technical afterthought but as a strategic lever for efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. By embedding intelligence and robustness into this critical planning step, Daedalus® Tail Assigner enables airlines to unlock millions in annual savings, strengthen OTP, and lay the foundation for greener, more reliable operations.
For a deeper dive into how smarter tail assignment can unlock efficiency, resilience, and sustainability for airlines, we invite you to explore our full white paper. Download the report here.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 29, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Features
By Catarina Silva, Travel in Motion AG
In my previous blog Rethinking airline loyalty: Why traveller status could be a strategic game-changer, I posed a provocation: what if airlines could reward travellers before they ever flew with them, simply based on travel behaviour elsewhere? A “Traveller Status”. Since publishing that post, I have received strong feedback and comments. The enthusiasm for the idea was matched only by the question that inevitably followed: “How would we actually do this?”
Let us move from concept to action. Turning this idea into reality is more than perks and marketing. It touches data access, IT infrastructure, partnerships and even the politics of loyalty programmes. Here is how airlines can make Traveller Status real and the roadblocks they will need to navigate.
How to collect travel behaviour outside your ecosystem
The Traveller Status model rests on one foundational capability: access to travellers’ flight behaviour before they ever book with your airline. That requires both data sources and traveller incentives:
- Traveller-provisioned data: encourage travellers to share their past travel activity through opt-in mechanisms such as
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- Email parsing: tools that extract flight details from confirmation emails (e.g., how TripIt and Google Trips work)
- Loyalty wallet apps: leverage platforms that aggregate loyalty accounts (e.g., AwardWallet, Point.me or Cardlytics)
- Receipt syncing apps: allow users to upload travel receipts or sync with apps such as Expensify
- Corporate and TMC feeds: partner with TMCs and corporate travel platforms to analyse aggregated, anonymised behaviour of frequent business travellers
- Travel affinity signals: explore partnerships with data marketplaces or customer data platforms (CDPs) that use web cookies, bookings and cross-site behaviour to identify travel-intent users across brands
- Incentivising travellers to share data: travellers will provide their data if the value is clear. Practical motivators include
- Status jumpstart: “Get Traveller Status by syncing your travel activity, no miles needed”
- Gamification: “Unlock vouchers or perks based on verified travel behaviour”; “Gain wallet cash for each trip”; “Collect stamps in your digital travel book for discounts”
- Loyalty match and upgrade: match their status elsewhere and instantly upgrade if they share proof of travel volume.
This turns data collection into a transparent, high-value exchange.
Who gets Traveller Status?
Once data is collected, airlines can define the segmentation logic for Traveller Status (e.g. 10 or more flights in the past six months, overlap with strategic routes, premium cabin or ancillary spend), using behaviour indicators that show acquisition potential.
How to reward the traveller
Most loyalty programmes today reward how much someone flies. But in the retail era of airline commerce, how they book and interact can be just as valuable, especially for Traveller Status. This opens the door to a more modern framework, where profitable, direct or high-engagement behaviours are rewarded.
Channel-based incentives: prioritise and reward behaviours that drive better margin or data ownership for your airline:
- Booking directly on airline.com or the mobile app: cash wallet credit, fee waivers, discounts or early access to sales or dynamic offers
- Engagement with owned channels: rewards for using the app (push notifications, wallet cards, in-app upgrades); perks for opting in to personalisation, alerts and fare tracking
- NDC-based purchases: incentivise bookings through partners connected via NDC, similar to booking directly
Profile enrichment: offer perks or Traveller Status credits for completing profile information, preferences or payment details. This strategy turns Traveller Status into a retail onboarding engine.
What are the IT and commercial implications?
This shift from reactive loyalty to proactive engagement will require investment, but it positions airlines for long-term commercial agility.
Deploying Traveller Status touches multiple systems, for which airlines must consider:
- CRM readiness to ingest and segment prospects based on external travel data
- Offer engine flexibility to personalise offers based on inferred value, not just loyalty tiers
- API infrastructure to allow integration with third-party data sources
- Consent management to comply with privacy regulations
- Customer identity resolution to link fragmented digital profiles, especially if a traveller has not previously interacted with the airline (e.g. LiveRamp, Acxiom)
It also touches the broader loyalty and commercial ecosystem, for which airlines must prepare:
- Alliance recognition: begin with benefits limited to your airline only, and extend as partners are ready
- Credit card partner reaction:
- Use Traveller Status to highlight credit card offers tied to travel behaviour
- Involve banks in status qualification
- Enable credit card spending or travel-related purchases to contribute towards status
- Retail and travel partner participation:
- Enable status based on partners’ tiers (e.g. hotel platinum or car rental gold)
- Enable third-party partners to issue benefits for Traveller Status holders
- Enable a shared “travel behaviour score” across your partner ecosystem
- Track performance and measure ROI:
- Tie Traveller Status offers to unique promo codes or booking paths
- Track redemption, upsell behaviour and lifetime value
- Compare travellers who received offers against those who did not, but matched on behaviour
Can airlines start Traveller Status today?
The short answer: yes, but not at full scale. Current ecosystems are not built to support a fully open Traveller Status model. But airlines do not need to wait until 2030 for new architectures.
Low-risk, high-signal examples that could be deployed now include:
- Building a Traveller Status onboarding widget inside the airline app where customers can sync email receipts, add trip data manually or connect to a wallet aggregator
- Identifying fragmented travellers on high-yield routes and extending Traveller Status invitations
- Partnering with TMCs or SME travel platforms to spot multi-carrier frequent travellers, then offering Traveller Status as a conversion lever
Traveller Status reflects a fundamental shift in thinking, but it is also a test of commercial courage. For those who take the lead, the reward is significant: a smarter, faster and more direct path to building meaningful traveller relationships in a fragmented world.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 23, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation
Aviation’s future isn’t about faster check-ins or flashier apps. It’s about operations that think for themselves. Agentic AI is the leap from automation to autonomy: a system that rebooks, reroutes, and reallocates without waiting for human input. It is the difference between reacting to delays and preventing them. For an industry under pressure to deliver efficiency, resilience, and sustainability at once, this is the moment to turn intelligence into action.
Today, most airlines manage operational and sustainability data separately. Flight metrics such as fuel burn and load factors are tracked in real-time, while carbon reporting is generally required annually. This delay creates blind spots that make compliance harder and slow progress.
DataArt bridges this divide. With Agentic AI and the AI Lake Accelerator (AILA), airlines unify fragmented data, moving from retrospective reports to real-time action:
- Agentic AI moves beyond rule-based automation, proactively supporting goal-driven decisions while keeping humans in control.
- AILA provides the data foundation: a cloud-native environment that unifies operational and environmental data into one reliable source.
Together, they help airlines progress in three areas: sustainability, commercial performance, and operational efficiency.
Sustainability: From reports to real-time action
Under ICAO’s CORSIA framework, international airlines must report and offset emissions starting in 2027. Many carriers invest in newer fleets, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), and waste reduction. Yet SAF use remains low, accounting for less than 0.3% of total aviation fuel in 2024. Emissions tracking, meanwhile, remains fragmented and retrospective.
Real-time data changes this. One regional carrier found that 12% of its emissions came not from flying but from delays at the gate. Linking ground operations data into emissions dashboards cut turnaround fuel burn and improved punctuality.
Agentic AI goes further: forecasting contrail formation, suggesting taxi routes that minimise fuel burn, or reallocating resources to prevent delays. These steps cut carbon and cost at once.
DataArt’s experience in other sectors shows the value of real-time optimisation. A smart city platform aggregated air quality data from multiple sources and adjusted commuter routes to reduce exposure. The same principle applies in aviation: with AI, similar results to traditional optimisation methods can be achieved in a fraction of the time, dynamically optimising routes based on real-time information the AI agent receives.
Commercial growth: Personalisation meets responsibility
Aviation’s profitability hinges on ancillary revenue, loyalty programs, and differentiated experiences. At the same time, younger travellers increasingly choose carriers demonstrating climate responsibility.
Agentic AI acts as an information broker across fragmented commercial systems. By unifying reservation, sales, and loyalty data, it enables:
- Dynamic pricing that factors in both demand and route-level carbon intensity.
- Sustainability-linked rewards, such as extra points for booking SAF-backed flights.
- Real-time service recovery, providing tailored compensation or rebooking while prioritising lower-emission alternatives, such as offering SAF-backed flights or more efficient connections.
Airlines like KLM, Lufthansa, and Virgin Atlantic highlight sustainability as a differentiator in CEO messaging. Yet without integrated data, these remain ambitions, rather than outcomes. Embedding environmental signals into loyalty and sales programs helps airlines align revenue with climate goals while building trust.
Similar approaches have proven effective outside aviation. DataArt built a chatbot for a sustainability information provider that turned unstructured data into structured supply chain models. It tripled the speed of analysis, enabling better commercial decisions. Airlines can adopt similar approaches to transform fragmented loyalty and reservations data into actionable insights.
Operational efficiency: Smarter, leaner, greener
Delays increase fuel burn, crew overtime, and compensation costs, which Eurocontrol estimates to be several billion euros. In Europe, nearly one in four scheduled flights runs late.
Many airlines still depend on manual data entry and siloed IT systems, slow information flow fragments situational awareness, leading to reactive decisions.
Agentic AI can help. By analysing data across operations control, ground handling, and flight crews, it identifies disruption risks and suggests timely interventions. Airlines emphasise that AI should support, not replace, human decision-makers by accelerating awareness, forecasting disruption impacts, and reducing information overload.
Consider an airport that integrated building management data into a central sustainability lake. Predictive forecasting cuts emissions and energy costs. The same logic applies to aircraft turnaround and crew scheduling: efficiency and sustainability reinforce each other.
Why now?
Three forces make this shift urgent:
- Regulation is accelerating. CORSIA, the EU’s CSRD, and IFRS frameworks demand verifiable, near real-time reporting.
- Stakeholder expectations are rising. Investors, regulators, and passengers want measurable progress, not aspirational targets.
- Technology has matured. With accelerators like AILA, even mid-sized carriers can deploy integrated data lakes in weeks, not years.
From intention to impact
Agentic AI and AILA are not silver bullets. Success requires cultural change, integration with legacy systems, and human-AI collaboration. But the payoff is clear:
- Credible sustainability progress is traceable to source data.
- Commercial strategies that reflect climate responsibility.
- Resilient operations that cut cost and carbon together.
By 2030, airlines that embed AI into daily operations will pull decisively ahead of those that do not. The leaders of the next decade will treat sustainability as a live operational discipline, not a side report.
At the World Aviation Festival 2025, on October 7, DataArt experts will share how Agentic AI and AILA help carriers turn sustainability ambition into operational impact. With over 25 years of engineering experience and a culture of radical respect, DataArt partners with airlines, airports, MROs, and service providers to build advanced, resilient solutions tailored to aviation realities.
The time to act is now on every route, flight, and decision.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 18, 2025 | Airports, Digital Transformation, Features
The aviation industry stands at a crossroads. While passengers increasingly expect seamless, personalised experiences similar to what they receive from the likes of Amazon or Netflix, in many cases, airport travel remains fragmented.
Oftentimes, stakeholders operate in silos, data sits isolated across systems, and passengers are left to navigate disconnected touchpoints throughout their journey.
Airports that successfully break down these barriers and create connected travel experiences unlock new revenue streams and benefit from competitive advantages.
Laying the foundation with people, strategy, and culture
People and organisational transformation are key to connected travel. This requires a shift in mindset, from managing individual products in isolation to orchestrating entire passenger experiences.
“I believe we need to move away from managing individual products in isolation and instead orchestrate the entire passenger experience,” explains Mathilde Burtin-Bell, Head of Commercial Services at CAVU. “We need to stop measuring success by individual product margin alone. Instead, we should focus on customer lifetime value across the whole journey. That requires an agile, test-and-learn approach.”
This cultural transformation demands investment in staff capabilities, ensuring teams have the skills and mandate to work across traditional boundaries.
The most successful airports establish clear, collaborative commercial strategies. This means moving beyond traditional departmental structures toward agile teams that can test, learn, and iterate rapidly.
Redefining success metrics to support connected travel
Traditional airport metrics, such as revenue per passenger and individual product margins, tell part of the story, overlooking passenger lifetime value across the entire journey and promoting siloed thinking.
The shift toward connected experiences requires equally connected measurement approaches. Rather than celebrating a successful car park booking or lounge purchase in isolation, airports need to track basket value per transaction, conversion rates across multiple touchpoints, and repeat purchase frequency.
“KPIs should reflect an ecosystem or holistic performance, not individual product silos,” notes Mathilde. “Real success is when a passenger books three services on one floor, not just one, but everyone looks beyond their silos and brings everything into one place.
“Without that, you won’t have the cultural shift needed within the airport, that transition from siloed to integrated journeys. Through these KPIs, you show the business’s intent and commitment.”
Why personalisation is challenging for airports – and why it’s important
For airports, personalisation can be taxing. A passenger’s product choices vary based on trip purpose, travel companions, duration, payment responsibility, and booking timeline. For instance, a family heading to a Mediterranean resort has entirely different needs than a traveller travelling for a two-day business trip.
“Delivering personalisation during the passenger journey is tricky,” explains Nolan Hough, Chief Growth Officer at CAVU. “Every customer changes their product choice based on why they’re travelling, who with, how long for, who’s paying, and how far in advance they book; all these factors influence buying decisions.”
“You need other data points and indicators to offer the right products and services. Many talk about personalisation as if you’ll know everything about a passenger and offer exactly what they need at the right time, but it falls apart if they bought something else through a different channel.
“The key is connecting data in real time and having those indicators. The industry is very fragmented. For example, when booking a flight, airports often don’t know the destination, so it’s hard to offer relevant products.
“That’s where the ecosystem matters. If airports and airlines collaborate, you can join those experiences and indicators to move toward personalisation and more relevant offers.”
The importance of embracing a collaborative ecosystem
The solution to fragmentation lies in reconceptualising the airport experience as an interconnected ecosystem rather than a collection of competing services. This requires a fundamental shift from “customer ownership” thinking to “customer journey stewardship.”
The magic happens when all stakeholders – airports, airlines, retailers, and service providers – create win-win-win scenarios. When a passenger benefits from relevant offers, retailers gain targeted spend, and airports increase conversion rates.
This approach enables airports to function more like digital marketplaces, connecting inventory providers with passengers based on intelligent matching rather than generic broadcasting.
How technology connects key touchpoints
While culture and strategy provide the foundation, technology makes integrated experiences possible. Unified platforms enable real-time data sharing and actionable insights across all touchpoints.
Modern airport technology stacks must support dynamic pricing, passenger recognition, and intelligent inventory management while remaining flexible enough to accommodate diverse stakeholder needs, facilitate collaboration and offer shared value creation.
Successful implementation follows a clear hierarchy: establish data foundations first, then build integrated systems that connect stakeholders and enable information flow. AI and advanced analytics layer on top, focusing on high-impact applications like personalised offers, predictive staffing, and dynamic pricing.
The role of experiential differentiation moving forward
Looking ahead, the greatest opportunities lie in experiential offerings that extend beyond traditional airport services. While hub airports like Changi or Hamad International have pioneered amazing destination experiences, regional airports have largely been left behind.
Yet passenger appetite for pre-bookable experiences exists across all airport types. Whether it’s expedited security, exclusive dining experiences, or curated local discovery packages, airports that think beyond traditional retail and services can create new revenue streams while enhancing passenger satisfaction.
The key is building platforms that can connect these diverse offerings into coherent, personalised packages. Success requires treating the airport not as a transit point, but as an integral part of the travel experience worthy of planning and anticipation.
The infrastructure exists. The passenger demand is clear. Now, the industry must break down the barriers that have defined airport operations for decades and deliver the collaborative, connected approach that passengers deserve.
Want to dive deeper into these insights?
Watch the full webinar Reimagining Airport Value: The Future of Revenue Beyond the Runway, and gain practical insights for transforming your commercial strategies.
Access the complete session here and discover how leading airports are already implementing these connected travel solutions.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 11, 2025 | Airlines, Airports, Features
By Neil Barnfather
As someone who has navigated countless airports as a blind traveller, I’ve experienced firsthand both the barriers that make aviation inaccessible and the transformative power of inclusive technology. The European Accessibility Act (EAA), which became enforceable on June 28, is more than just another regulatory hurdle – it’s an opportunity for aviation to lead the next wave of inclusive innovation, benefiting not only every traveller but also airports and airlines themselves.
The reality check: Enforcement is here and now
Let me be clear. The EAA isn’t a distant concern; it’s an immediate reality with real consequences. Just weeks after the June deadline, France delivered a stark wake-up call. Four of the country’s largest retail chains – Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc, and Picard – received formal legal notices for failing to make their digital services accessible to people with disabilities. These weren’t gentle warnings; they were formal legal proceedings backed by disability advocacy groups.
This enforcement action should galvanise the aviation industry, not frighten it. It demonstrates that accessibility compliance has moved from voluntary best practice to legal necessity. But more importantly, it signals an unprecedented opportunity for aviation to lead where others have stumbled.
A historic market opportunity: Accessible tourism’s economic impact
The business case for accessibility has never been stronger. Across Europe, 135 million people with disabilities represent significant economic potential. Accessible tourism alone contributes €394 billion annually to the EU’s GDP. When we also consider their families, travel companions, and the growing aging population that depends on accessibility features, the market opportunity becomes even clearer and has the power to help reshape aviation economics.
Recent research reveals that comprehensive accessibility improvements could increase this accessible tourism market by as much as 40%, potentially reaching €537 billion in GDP benefits within the EU. As someone who has spent years advocating for accessible travel, I can tell you that this market is hungry for innovation. The technology to capture this opportunity already exists; the EAA simply provides the regulatory framework that makes implementation essential.
The curb-cut effect: Innovation that elevates everyone
Here’s what excites me most about the EAA’s potential: accessibility improvements create what’s known as the “curb-cut effect” – solutions designed for people with disabilities that end up benefiting everyone. The term comes from sidewalk curb cuts originally designed for wheelchair users, which quickly became essential for parents with strollers, travelers with luggage, and delivery workers.
In aviation, this phenomenon is already emerging:
- Multi-modal information systems that deliver real-time updates via visual displays, audio announcements, and mobile notifications create redundant communication pathways, improving reliability for all travelers.
- Voice-activated interfaces, initially designed for passengers unable to use traditional touchscreens, are now the preferred method for busy travellers.
- High-contrast displays and readable fonts, which assist blind and low vision (BLV) passengers, also help anyone reading screens in bright airport lighting.
- Accessible navigation systems offering clear, step-by-step guidance reduce confusion for travellers with disabilities, as well as for international visitors and anyone navigating complex airport environments under stress.
The EAA’s requirement for services to be “perceivable, operable, understandable and robust” across multiple sensory channels perfectly aligns with aviation’s technology revolution. Rather than viewing accessibility as a constraint, forward-thinking airports and airlines are discovering it’s a catalyst for breakthrough innovations.
From compliance to competitive advantage
As someone passionate about inclusive design, I’ve witnessed how accessibility can transform from what many perceive as a burden into a competitive advantage. The UK Civil Aviation Authority’s recent accessibility audit revealed significant variations in airline digital compliance, but the leaders in this space are discovering tangible business benefits:
- Operational efficiency: Accessible systems reduce passenger confusion and minimise flight delays caused by lost travelers.
- Enhanced customer experience: When airports design for the most challenging accessibility needs, they create solutions that work brilliantly for all travelers.
- Market leadership: Organisations that embrace inclusive design principles establish themselves as innovation leaders while building reputation for customer-centricity.
- Future-proofing: Europe’s aging population means accessibility features will become mainstream expectations rather than specialised accommodations.
The leadership moment: The time is now
The aviation industry has always thrived on turning challenges into competitive advantages. Safety regulations that once seemed burdensome became the foundation for operational excellence, while environmental standards drove fuel‑efficiency innovation. Now, accessibility requirements present the opportunity to pioneer inclusive technologies, open vast new markets, and rethink costly, process‑driven PRM models. That approach is expensive and growing more so, but digital‑first solutions rebalance costs, improve efficiency, and deliver a win–win–win for passengers, operators, and regulators.
Early movers in accessibility innovation will secure market position before competition intensifies. Organisations that act decisively can shape industry standards, gain first‑mover advantage, and future‑proof their business. Unlike previous regulatory changes with lengthy development cycles, today’s digital‑first accessibility solutions are ready for immediate deployment – either alongside existing systems or as stand‑alone options. For the first time, technology delivers this flexibility at scale.
The call to action: Leading aviation’s accessibility revolution
The evidence is clear, the framework is established, and enforcement is real. What happens next will determine which aviation organisations become accessibility leaders and which scramble to catch up. This is not about ticking compliance boxes or avoiding penalties – it is about reimagining how aviation serves its passengers. The French retailers who received legal notices chose to wait and hesitate. Aviation leaders have a different choice: act decisively and show that inclusive design is not just the right thing to do but the smart thing.
Start now. Audit your digital touchpoints. Engage with travelers who have disabilities. Partner with accessibility providers. Train your teams. Above all, shift from seeing accessibility as accommodation to recognising it as an innovation catalyst.
Aviation has always been about connecting people and breaking down barriers. The EAA asks us to fulfill that promise completely. The question is not whether you will embrace accessibility – it is whether you will lead the transformation.
The moment is now.
—
Neil Barnfather MBE serves as Chief Commercial Officer at GoodMaps, where he leads global strategy for accessible indoor navigation solutions. A passionate advocate for inclusive technology, Neil brings over two decades of experience in digital transformation and accessibility innovation to the aviation industry. As a blind traveller himself, Neil combines personal insight with professional expertise to champion accessibility solutions that benefit everyone.
Neil will be at this year’s World Aviation Festival in Lisbon and would love to meet and discuss any of this at the GoodMaps booth #2-141. To arrange a meeting, you can use this link: https://cal.com/NeilBarnfather.
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by WAF_Contributor | Sep 4, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Retailing
It’s 5:45am. A catering team is loading barsets onto the first flight of the day. Somewhere between the warehouse and the tarmac, a decision was made: how many breakfast wraps to load on board.
But was that decision based on real data from recent flights… or just what they packed last Tuesday?
For years, inflight retail has been driven by gut feel, historical assumptions, and hope. Hope that what’s packed will sell, that nothing runs out too soon, and that the returns won’t include half the trolley.
It’s a system built for yesterday’s flights and it’s showing its age.
The quiet revolution in the aisles
There’s something quietly transformative happening on board and it’s not a new snack box or redesigned amenity kit.
It’s data.
Airlines now sit on a wealth of retail information: from real-time POS to consumption patterns, route preferences to individual buying behaviour. And for those who are willing to use it, this data is changing everything.
It’s shifting onboard retail from guessing what passengers want… to actually knowing.
- Which routes consistently run out of sandwiches?
- Which BOB combos spike on afternoon departures?
- What do leisure travellers reach for that business passengers ignore?
- Which items never leave the cart but still get packed?
If you’re responsible for onboard retail, you’ve probably asked some version of these questions. Now, you can answer them with confidence.
Smarter stocking = Stronger margins, less waste
One of the biggest quick wins? Stocking based on reality, not routine.
With data-informed planning, airlines are optimising product mixes at the route level, reducing unnecessary uplift, increasing availability of bestsellers, and improving crew flow. It’s not just about fewer stockouts or less waste (though those matter). It’s about profit and passenger experience finally aligning.
Unlock hidden opportunities with precise stocking predictions and advanced forecasting to maximise sales, optimise inventory, minimise waste, and increase revenue on every flight.
Personalisation at 35,000 feet
Passengers are used to personalised experiences everywhere else in their digital lives, in their apps, streaming services, loyalty programs.
So why not onboard?
With real-time retail systems and CRM integrations, airlines can now tailor inflight offers by loyalty status, booking history, seat type, and even time of day. That means fewer generic trolleys and more relevance, snack suggestions that match past orders, or exclusive bundles for returning customers.
Image Credit: Not Guessing, Knowing. Data Clarity’s Dynamic Bar: Easily analyse flight data, sales patterns, and trends to predict product demand.
This isn’t about gimmicks. It’s about driving relevance, loyalty, and revenue at scale.
So, why aren’t more airlines doing it?
It’s not the tools.
It’s not the talent.
It’s not even the budget (most of the time).
It’s mindset.
Many onboard retail strategies are still built on legacy platforms, legacy habits, and a fear of changing what ‘kind of works.’ But ‘kind of works’ isn’t good enough anymore, not for margins, not for sustainability, and not for a generation of passengers used to seamless digital experiences.
This isn’t about replacing human intuition. It’s about giving your teams the data to make smarter, faster, more confident decisions.
Final boarding call
Inflight retail isn’t just about what fits in the trolley. It’s about what fits the moment, the passenger, and the airline’s broader commercial and environmental goals.
The data is already there. It’s been flying with you all along, in every click, every receipt, every unmet request. All it needs is the right system and the right mindset to bring it to life.
So, the question is: are you still guessing… or are you ready to know? Click here to learn more.
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by WAF_Contributor | Aug 14, 2025 | Airports, Events, Interviews
Denver International Airport is growing fast-faster than its original design could have ever anticipated. Built for 50 million annual passengers, DEN welcomed over 82 million last year, and is tracking toward 100 million+ in the near future. So how does an airport scale that rapidly while staying efficient, sustainable, and passenger-focused?
In this exclusive interview, Dave LaPorte, COO, walks us through how DEN is leveraging technology, modular design, and sustainability to meet explosive demand-without expanding its terminal footprint (yet).
“It’s a big terminal-but it feels small because we’re so busy.”
To boost efficiency and throughput, DEN has:
- Revamped security checkpoints with CT machines, walk-through scanners, and remote image screening
- Deployed Scarabee technology for faster, more flexible passenger processing
- Rolled out self-bag drops with Materna systems, giving airlines and travelers more control
“We’ve nearly doubled our security lane throughput. It’s a much quicker experience now.”
DEN’s commitment to sustainability is equally ambitious. The airport spans 53 square miles, with 200 acres of solar arrays, an energy performance contract reducing power usage by 20%, and LEED Platinum certification for all 39 of its new gates.
“We’re facilitating growth-without the environmental impact that usually comes with it.”
Looking ahead, LaPorte shares plans for a major north terminal expansion, new customs facilities, and infrastructure to support up to 120 million passengers annually by 2045.
But the vision goes beyond capacity.
“We want a seamless, hands-free experience. Imagine using biometrics to check in, clear security, buy coffee, and board-all without taking out your wallet.”
With a focus on flexibility, open-source systems, and proactive asset management, DEN is future-proofing every investment it makes today to deliver world-class travel experiences for decades to come.
🎥 Watch the full interview to learn how Denver International Airport is building the future of air travel-at scale.
Questions asked include:
- How has DEN managed operations amid massive passenger growth?
- What role is technology playing in improving capacity and flow?
- What sustainability initiatives are currently underway or planned?
- What does the ideal airport experience look like in 20 years?
- How is DEN future-proofing its infrastructure and systems?
- Are there any major expansion projects or partnerships on the horizon?
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by WAF_Contributor | Jul 30, 2025 | Airlines, Interviews, On-demand
As the aviation industry rapidly evolves, the focus is shifting from fragmented travel experiences to intelligent, seamless journeys-and agentic AI is leading the way.
At Aviation Festival Americas, we caught up with Vinay Sukumar, Chief Product Officer at RozieAI, to unpack how agentic AI is transforming air travel, improving personalization, and reshaping how passengers and airlines interact.
“Agentic AI lets you break down complex, real-life scenarios into specialized agents-like gate or booking agents-that collaborate to deliver smarter outcomes.”
Sukumar explains how agent-based systems can streamline every touchpoint in the passenger journey-from booking and baggage to airport navigation and real-time communication. These agents don’t just respond-they anticipate.
“Instead of fragmented info across emails, apps, and websites, our system uses journey orchestration to guide travelers through every step with real-time, proactive support.”
With RozieAI’s Journey Orchestration Platform, airlines and airports can transform passive communication into dynamic, consultative experiences, setting clear expectations and building trust.
The conversation also touched on:
How AI and hyper-personalization benefit not just passengers, but also operational efficiency
Balancing automation and human touch, ensuring agents escalate to humans with full context
Why modernizing doesn’t mean ripping and replacing-pre-trained components allow rapid deployment without overhauling IT infrastructure
The future of agentic AI:
“We believe travelers will have their own AI personas-digital concierges living inside airline apps, anticipating needs, offering guidance, and creating truly intuitive journeys.”
🎥 Watch the full interview to discover how RozieAI is pioneering a smarter, more human-centric future for global travel.
Questions asked include:
- What is agentic AI, and why is it important for the future of air travel?
- How can AI unify the fragmented passenger journey into a seamless experience?
- What does RozieAI’s journey orchestration platform do, and how does it work?
- How does personalization benefit both passengers and airlines?
- What’s the right balance between automation and human touch in customer service?
- What are the biggest barriers to modernizing airline and airport systems?
- Where do you see agentic AI going in the next 3–5 years?
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by WAF_Contributor | Jul 14, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Travel Tech
Airlines are risk averse. Everybody knows that, right? And rightly so – safety and risk management in the aviation industry is something that must be taken seriously. Ensuring safe operations is the single most important topic for any airline, and we as an industry collaborate to ensure that thousands of flights take off and land every day without incident – that is risk management (rather than aversion) at its finest. Part of ensuring safety in the air is having rock-solid IT systems on the ground that enable this – flight planning, flight operations management, weight and balance and so on. Indeed, airlines have historically been pioneers in running large-scale IT operations that could support a global business operating non-stop around the clock. But now, when we are talking about modernising airline IT, some of these airline applications look a bit, well… clunky. As with many that are pioneers, you often get overtaken by others that learn from your early mistakes. Or you reach a level of maturity that becomes costly and difficult to disentangle. As an industry, we have known this for years, probably decades – while we still have our monolithic reservation systems, the world of IT has moved on dramatically. Pretty much everything has “gone digital” – how we listen to music, watch TV, how we bank, how we shop, how we dress ourselves and even how we meet the love of our life.
How has this been made possible? Well, the advent of the internet helped of course, but more critically the way we build and run software applications has fundamentally changed. Cloud computing has enabled a degree of agility in building software that was not present ten, or even five years ago. Nowadays, a new digital services company can bring its product to market in a matter of months, sometimes even quicker. In the airline industry, sometimes implementing a new SSR can take longer. A new codeshare partnership? Let’s not go there. New cabin products? Ok, let’s stop with the scary examples J
While airlines have managed to “go digital” to a certain degree, the core is still old and clunky (some older and clunkier than others, but still in relative terms “old”). So, when we talk about changing these core systems, we realise that we maybe do not have the agility that other, younger industries may have. The monolithic nature of the airline IT landscape certainly does not make transforming easier, although here we come back to the topic of airlines and “risk aversion”. We spend a lot of time talking with airlines and vendors about transformation – where to start, what is the value, where is there least risk? How do we break down this “legacy” technology stack into manageable chunks? There is a perception that the airline retailing transformation journey is a path frought with danger, that it is something akin to the “knife-edge” PSS migrations that we all love to reminisce about (but wouldn’t want to repeat). Indeed, given that one possible (and, for some at least, desirable) outcome of the transformation is a more modular IT landscape, it is a clever tactic of some incumbents to paint this picture (“better the devil you know”). But is this really the case? Is the airline retailing transformation such a mammoth undertaking that it could threaten the commercial existence of an airline? (We used to say that if an airline was unable to operate for more than a handful of days, they would be out of business). While some may see it this way, I don’t think so – I think this is rather a case of us (as an industry) falling back to our “risk averse” way of thinking. Yes, there will be risks along the way, but the key to making the journey as risk-free as possible is having the right mindset. Risks should not stop us taking bold moves – we just have to play the game with careful consideration. Disentangling the legacy wiring of our industry will take years – we all understand this. But if we break this down into manageable, bite-sized chunks, we not only make progress more quickly but also reduce the risks as much as possible. We make small steps that have a low impact, manage this carefully, learn from the approach and repeat the exercise. Indeed, some airlines we work with are already on this journey – taking the first steps to bypass some legacy processes and tech to prove out the feasibility of their Offer and Order transition approaches.
So yes – airlines may be risk averse, however that’s not the same as being change averse. The airline retailing transformation will involve risk, but that does not mean the journey is something to fear — it’s something to manage, deliberately and thoughtfully. Just as we already manage risk every day in operations, compliance and safety, we can apply that same discipline to our commercial technology. The journey toward modern retailing is not a single leap, but a series of deliberate steps — tested, learned from and repeated. And many airlines are already on this path, bypassing legacy constraints to explore what’s possible in Offer and Order transformation.
If you’d like to explore how to take the first steps (or the next ones), we’d be happy to talk.
Nick Stott, Travel in Motion AG
by WAF_Contributor | Jun 20, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Payments
Edgar, Dunn & Company, strategy consultancy specialised in payments with dedicated expertise in travel and airline payments, shares its perspectives on airline payments.
Throughout 2025, Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC)’s travel payments practice continues to explore the evolving role of payments in the airline industry. The first article presenting an overview of key pain points for airlines can be accessed here. Following our discussions on payment acceptance, this article shifts focus to a frequently overlooked lever for growth and differentiation: issuing opportunities for airlines.
While most airlines have invested considerable effort in optimising payment acceptance, far fewer have capitalised on the opportunities that lie in issuing their own payment products. This gap is surprising, and strategic. Airlines enjoy a unique position of trust with their customers and partners such as travel agencies, possess rich behavioural and transactional data, and already operate robust loyalty programmes. And yet, most airlines have not fully explored how issuing solutions can support customer loyalty, improve margins, and unlock new revenue streams.
The missed opportunities in issuing
Compared to other sectors, airline-issued payment products are still underdeveloped. Working closely with our clients across the globe, we observe four recurring challenges that have limited the development of issuing programmes:
- Limited product offerings by audience segment: airlines rarely differentiate their issuing solutions across customer segments. Consumers, business travellers, corporate buyers and travel agents all have different payment preferences and needs yet often face a one-size-fits-all payment offering, if any.
- Disjointed payment and loyalty ecosystems: while many airlines operate sophisticated loyalty programmes, these are seldom integrated with payment tools. As a result, opportunities to drive engagement, capture data, or reward spend in real time are lost or not optimised as much as they could be.Yet, other industries offer compelling inspiration. For example, in Episode 44 of our EDC Podcast, Suryaveer Singh, Head of Loyalty, CRM and Data Analytics at Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), discusses how their Yes Rewards programme successfully integrates loyalty and payments to engage customers beyond core services, creating value through data-driven strategies and cross-sector partnerships. This kind of approach offers a blueprint for how airlines could better align loyalty and payment ecosystems.
- Lack of a tailored issuing model: airlines often rely on “traditional” co-branded credit cards issued via third-party banks or financial institutions and targeting consumers. These partnerships generate revenue through sales of miles to issuers, but the model can be suboptimal and could be more tailored for other segments. EDC encourages airlines to consider a wider range of issuing models depending on their strategic objectives and which segments they want to focus on.
- No issuing strategy or ownership: in many airlines, issuing is not treated as a core product or strategic lever. There is often no internal sponsor, roadmap, or cross-functional coordination. As a result, issuing initiatives are fragmented or seen as marketing-led rather than product-driven limiting their ability to scale, adapt, or deliver long-term value. Clear ownership and product thinking are critical to unlock the full potential of issuing solutions.
As passenger confidence and travel volumes are back to pre-Covid levels, the time is ripe to rethink how issuing can support broader commercial goals for airlines.
Why issuing matters, now more than ever
The traditional airline business model is under pressure. With operating costs rising in many cases and price competition intensifying, airlines must look beyond fares to drive differentiation, profitability and generate new revenue streams. Issuing can support three strategic objectives:
- Strengthening customer engagement: payment products embedded in mobile apps or integrated with loyalty programmes increase usage frequency and deepen brand affinity.
- Enhancing spend visibility and data: issued products give airlines access to transaction-level data beyond ticket sales. This data can be used to personalise offers, create ancillary bundles, and better understand non-travel-related spend patterns.
- Capturing new revenue streams: depending on the issuing model, airlines can benefit from a range of revenue sources, including card fee revenue, transaction fee revenue, FX margins, etc.
Where the market is moving and how airlines explore issuing to unlock new value pools
A few airlines have already started to explore issuing opportunities, often in collaboration with fintechs, traditional banks, or BaaS (banking-as-a-service) platforms. Though still relatively rare, these initiatives highlight the flexibility of issuing models and the wide range of card products that airlines can leverage, such as traditional co-branded cards to enhance loyalty, UATP cards designed for corporate travel, SME-focused cards and virtual cards for simplified business payments, prepaid gift cards aimed at consumers, stored-value cards for travel credit or ancillary services, and multi-currency cards to support international travellers.
Some examples illustrate how these different models can be applied in practice:
- AirAsia has integrated a digital wallet into its “super app” ecosystem, which operates across several Southeast Asian markets, including Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The wallet, branded as AirAsia pocket, enables customers to store refunds, purchase ancillaries like baggage or meals, and pay for non-travel items across lifestyle merchants, aiming to streamline in-app payments and encourage repeat usage. Following this, the Super App saw a 236% year-over-year increase in monthly active users, reaching over 10.6 million in Q2 2022, with average transactions per user increasing from one to seven. In Q1 2024, non-aviation businesses generated over $132 million, contributing 12% of total group revenue.
- GOL Linhas Aéreas has leveraged its Smiles loyalty programme through co-branded credit cards issued by multiple major Brazilian banks, including Bradesco, Banco do Brasil, and Santander. This multi-bank partnership model is particularly innovative, as most airlines typically rely on a single co-brand issuer. By engaging several banks, GOL has significantly expanded the reach of its credit card offering, tapping into a broader range of customer segments and acquisition channels. These cards allow customers to earn Smiles miles on everyday spending and have helped grow the programme’s user base, particularly among leisure travellers. With over 20 million members, Smiles has become a key driver of customer loyalty and ancillary revenue.
- United Airlines, in partnership with Chase, offers co-branded credit cards specifically tailored to small businesses in the US. These products include business-focused spend categories, employee card controls, and deeper integration with United’s loyalty programme. This segmentation approach goes beyond consumer co-brands and aligns more closely with the travel needs of SMEs.
- Air Canada issues UATP accounts through its ACGlobe and ACGlobePlus programmes, providing travel agencies and corporate clients with a centralised payment solution for air travel in Canada. This positions Air Canada as both a carrier and a B2B payment issuer within the corporate travel ecosystem.
- Air France and KLM have partnered with Nium to roll out Nium Airline Payments (NAP), a “closed loop” virtual card solution targeting travel agents. NAP replaces traditional card schemes with UATP rails and bank transfers, enabling lower payment costs, faster settlement, and simplified reconciliation. The solution gives airlines more control over B2B payments and strengthens their commercial relationships with selected agents, starting with a rollout in Italy.
While such initiatives are not yet widespread, they reflect growing interest in bringing issuing closer to the core airline value proposition. Success will depend on aligning the issuing model with each airline’s commercial priorities, technical capabilities, and market context.
Choosing the right issuing model
There is no universal blueprint for issuing success. Airlines must first define their strategic objectives such as strengthening relationships with specific customer segments, collecting actionable data, generating cost savings, or developing new revenue streams. They must then carefully evaluate different models along three key axes:
- Who? Customer segmentation: a robust issuing strategy caters to distinct customer profiles, from high-frequency travellers who require rich, comprehensive features to occasional fliers who prefer simple, digital-first tools. Airlines must segment their customer base by needs, geography, and the types of airline products they use, and tailor issuing products accordingly.
- What? Product features: issuing a payment product can include many features ranging from “basic” payment functionalities all the way to broader financial and/or travel-related services. Product features must address the full range of customer needs. Every touchpoint – before, during, and after travel – should be designed with issuing products in mind, enhancing both the value proposition and the customer experience.
- How? Control vs. delegation: there are implementation options that provide full control over the payment experience and data, e.g., opting to work with BaaS providers or becoming a UATP issuer vs. delegating to bank partners under white-label arrangements. Airlines should evaluate their role in the issuing value chain, deciding which activities to own, where customer interaction or strategic value is high, and which to outsource to partners.
Four best practices to unlock issuing opportunities
Based on our global consulting experience, including multiple engagements with airlines across the globe, Edgar, Dunn & Company has developed a proven set of best practices to help airlines leverage issuing opportunities:
- Conduct an issuing opportunity assessment: map out customer needs, behavioural patterns, and current gaps in payment journeys. Use data to prioritise use cases with the highest ROI to decide whether and where to issue payment products.
- Build a clear implementation roadmap and go-to-market plan: for instance, identify how to avoid operating loyalty and payment in silos and how to market issuing products.
- Choose the right partners: whether through a fintech, bank, payment scheme or a BaaS provider, airlines need to ensure partners align with strategic priorities, commercial ambitions and technology roadmap.
- Pilot, measure, iterate: an agile and iterative approach has proven effective for airlines. Start small, test quickly, and scale what works. Issuing is not a binary decision but a continuum of initiatives that can evolve with customer needs and business maturity.
These best practices are at the core of what Edgar, Dunn & Company proposes to its airline clients as part of dedicated issuing strategy projects, combining deep payments expertise with practical support.
Conclusion: from missed potential to strategic asset
Issuing is no longer just for banks. For airlines, it represents an untapped commercial lever that can enhance customer experience, support loyalty, improve data insights, generate cost savings and unlock new revenues. As the boundaries between travel, payments, and digital services blur, the time has come for airlines to include issuing in their payment’s strategy.
In our next article, we will explore the critical organisational questions airlines face in managing their payment functions. Who “owns” payments, and how should internal governance adapt to reflect payments’ growing strategic importance? Stay tuned for our next article: Governance matters, structuring payment ownership inside airlines.
We value industry dialogue and shared learning. If you have insights or perspectives to contribute, feel free to reach out to us at travelpayments@edgardunn.com and connect directly with us: Charlotte Piron-Seth, Louis Wapler, Pascal Burg and Greg Toussaint. We would be happy to arrange a discussion and exchange ideas.
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Article by Edgar, Dunn & Company
Edgar, Dunn & Company is a global strategy consulting firm specialising in payments and financial services. Since 1978, we have partnered with clients across the globe and developed an unrivalled depth in specialist expertise, with specific expertise in airline and travel payments. We offer a truly independent voice and our vision is to be the most trusted global payments consultancy. Today, we serve clients in over 45 countries through our global office network in North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. We help organisations (e.g., airlines, hotels, travel agents, car rental operators and payment providers) navigate the complex payments and fintech ecosystem, identify opportunities to accelerate profitable revenue growth, and drive their competitive advantage.
by WAF_Contributor | Jun 3, 2025 | Airlines, Digital Transformation, Travel Tech
Harnessing innovation to connect travelers with trusted partners and help them book their next trip with ease and confidence
Skyscanner started out as spreadsheet in Edinburgh back in 2003 with the simple aim of making it easier for travelers to search and compare flight options. Today, Skyscanner connects over 110 million users in 180 countries to more than 1,200 flight, hotel and car hire partners every month.
Amadeus’ trajectory started 16 years earlier, in 1987. Since then, Amadeus’ history has been a success story of growth and internationalization linked to innovation. Amadeus has an ongoing commitment to providing innovative and advanced technology to support the evolution of the travel and tourism sector and make the experience of travel better for everyone, everywhere.
In 2007, Skyscanner and Amadeus started working together, the beginning of a collaboration focused on improving the experience for travelers globally and covert bookings. Today, we speak with Phil Donathy, Product VP – Flights Marketplace, Skyscanner, and Alessandro Lodigiani, Vice President, Sales, Metasearch and Digital Players, Amadeus, about the evolution of this partnership, what we’ve accomplished together, how it has enhanced the traveler experience, and their shared vision for the future of travel.
How are Amadeus and Skyscanner leveraging technology to create seamless travel experiences?
Alessandro Lodigiani, Amadeus: Amadeus is a global travel technology company, providing IT solutions and services to airlines, airports, hotels, travel sellers, corporations, etc. Our mission is to make the experience of travel better for everyone. But we only progress as an industry by working together, that’s why it is so important to collaborate with partners such as Skyscanner. Our collaboration aims to integrate advanced technologies to streamline the travel process, making it more efficient and enjoyable for travelers. By combining our strengths, we can offer faster, more accurate search results and real-time pricing and availability to the travelers.
Phil Donathy, Skyscanner: Exactly. Skyscanner helps millions of travelers find and book their next trip. Making use of the latest technology, Skyscanner simplifies the complexity of travel – searching more than 100 billion prices every day, ensuring travelers see the best options for flights, hotels, and car hire all in one place. Our platform is designed to make travel planning easy and accessible for everyone, and to connect our airline and OTA partners to our engaged global audience. We’re focused on enhancing the travel experience by providing users with relevant, personalized and transparent options, ensuring that travelers have accurate content and prices, and seamless search experience. As a result, we excel at providing search and comparison capabilities for our travelers, making us a valuable brand and performance channel for our partners. Amadeus’ MetaConnect solution is one of the tools that empowers us in doing just this across our global marketplace.
How does this partnership contribute to innovation in the travel ecosystem?
Phil Donathy, Skyscanner: By combining our expertise and technology, we’re able to lead with innovative solutions such as Amadeus MetaConnect solution, to meet the needs of our travelers and partners. Our mutual focus is on making the travel experience more efficient, personalized, and transparent. We are always looking for new ways to create a more seamless user experience that benefits the traveler and ultimately boosts conversion for our partners.
Alessandro Lodigiani, Amadeus: We’re leveraging our collective strengths to enhance the experience of travel. It is only by working together we can properly advance. We are proud to say that our strong position in the middle of the travel ecosystem has played a part in helping Skyscanner to grow and succeed, and the tight partnership we have provides invaluable insights that helps us to constantly meet new needs and make the changes that transform travel.
Can you share some specific improvements in traveler experience resulting from this collaboration?
Alessandro Lodigiani, Amadeus: One example is our collaboration around the Amadeus MetaConnect solution, which we have worked together on since 2007, and that has allowed Skyscanner to scale their business. MetaConnect provides search results for over 100 airlines at once, and presents search results that match the information on the many airlines’ websites. This gives travelers more accurate offers at hand, which again builds trust and loyalty. It is a complex technology, but supports greatly the simplification and enhancement of the traveler experience when used by Skyscanner.
Phil Donathy, Skyscanner: Indeed, one of the key improvements is the speed and accuracy of search results. Travelers expect coherence between what they initially search for and what they can book in the end. And our travelers can now access real-time pricing and availability more easily, making their planning process smoother. This helps breed both confidence and trust in our travelers.
At Skyscanner, we are on a mission to help travelers plan and book trips with ease and confidence, and we know they are often looking for the best prices when looking for flights. We aim to provide a best-in-class, insight-driven brand-building experience for partners to drive more qualified traffic and more bookings. Our partnership with Amadeus and the Amadeus MetaConnect solution help ensure our visitors can see all possible options in one place. Combined with this, we know that Amadeus focuses every day on the same metrics that matter to Skyscanner – coverage, speed and accuracy.
What is the broader impact of this collaboration on the travel industry, and what does the future hold?
Alessandro Lodigiani, Amadeus: We’re committed to continuing our work on innovative initiatives. Our vision is that technology has a key role to play in the transformation of the travel industry; it is even more relevant than ever in delivering better experiences to travelers. All the major technology trends, whether it’s artificial intelligence (AI), the cloud or others, are poised to have a significant impact on travel. Last year, we conducted a research among travel industry leaders , and Generative AI was cited as a top priority for the next year by 46%, ahead of any other technology. As a leading travel technology company, Amadeus recognizes the immense potential of Generative AI to improve traveler experiences, streamline operations and drive innovation across the industry.
Phil Donathy, Skyscanner: Travelers will always want to have confidence they have found the very best deal for their trip and at Skyscanner, we believe in the value of partnership across the travel ecosystem to constantly improve the traveler experience.
Technology will be an enabler for this with notable improvements coming thick and fast as we see airlines adopting the next generation of offer and order management systems to unlock their retailing agenda. And of course, the way that travelers search will continue to evolve with innovation such as Generative AI. In the coming years, we will look forward to further collaboration with Amadeus and our mutual airline partners – leveraging technology to better connect travelers with the very best choice of who to book their travel with.
For more on Amadeus see:
by WAF_Contributor | Feb 24, 2025 | Airlines
Travel has changed dramatically over the years, and with it so has the loyalty program landscape. Gone are the days of simple, straightforward loyalty programs that reward customers with points for every flight taken or dollar spent. Today’s consumers are more sophisticated and their expectations with loyalty programs have evolved. They’re no longer satisfied with generic rewards that they have to wait months or even years for. Gen Z are actively seeking out personalized experiences that cater to their unique needs and preferences, and 75% of them are more likely to make a purchase if they can customize the product.
The problem with traditional loyalty programs
Traditional loyalty programs still have their place in today’s travel market but they must evolve to cater to the demands of today’s hyper-digital and hyper-connected consumer. Traditional loyalty programs reward consumers for their dollars spent and the flights taken, but the reward levels are often difficult to attain or rewards themselves difficult to redeem. Modern travelers crave experiences that adapt and cater to their travel needs, and are losing interest in cumbersome loyalty programs that haven’t evolved in decades. The traditional way of rewarding loyalty is no longer effective in retaining customers, especially younger generations, and consumers often switch to alternate programs within months. Airlines can help prevent this leakage by creating programs tailored to individual needs and preferences. In today’s digital age, consumers crave personalized experiences that make them feel valued and understood.
The rise of personalization
Personalization is the key to winning over and retaining the next generation of travelers, especially Gen Z. By offering customized experiences, airlines can increase customer loyalty and retention rates. According to Smart Insights, 62% of customers will stop using a product or service if there is no personalization. This is a wake-up call for airlines and online travel agencies (OTAs) to rethink their loyalty programs and focus on providing tailored experiences.
What does personalization look like in the travel industry?
Airlines can use data and analytics to create customized experiences that cater to individual needs and preferences. Personalization in the travel industry can take many forms but typically focuses on three main areas: tailored product offerings, real-time tracking and compensation, and targeted marketing.
Airlines can offer customized products and services, such as eSIMs, travel protection, priority boarding, and meals, to enhance the end-to-end travel journey. E-SIMs could be offered through loyalty programs, just as priority boarding and potential upgrades. Comprehensive travel protection as part of a loyalty program could also provide real-time tracking and compensation. Airlines can track issues such as flight delays or cancellations in real-time and automatically send out compensation to customers when things go wrong. Travellers no longer need to wait in line or on hold for hours to seek out a third-party for protection and compensation could be offered based on their loyalty levels, such as a free coffee or access to the lounge during delays. When things go wrong, as they often do, outside of the airline’s control, such as bad weather, strikes, air traffic control issues or passenger traffic increases, a loyalty program that helps them alleviate some of that distress can go a long way in retaining customers.
Targeted marketing is also fundamental in any business to cater to consumers with a discerning digital mindset. While complying with current regulations, airlines can use data and analytics to send tailored marketing campaigns to customers based on their preferences and travel history. For example, knowing a customer is delayed on their flight and offering loyalty holders a discount, free wifi, priority boarding or a complimentary beverage on their upcoming flight could help encourage repeat business.
Digitalization is key for loyalty programs and needs to be personalized. Airlines who have taken bold steps towards personalization saw a significant increase in revenue and return passengers. For example, one of our major airline partners offered a suite of product offerings (such as travel protection, airport parking, onboard wifi and bag pickup at home), delivered through personalized experiences, and increased their revenue by 8X, whilst improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is a testament to the power of personalization in the industry. Personalization allows customers to feel understood and valued, resulting in a deeper level of loyalty.
Loyalty programs should no longer simply be about points accrued and subsequent rewards that offer no real-time value – only around 5% of flyers are able to make any significant use of loyalty points. They should be about providing immediately accessible, targeted, and personalized experiences that make customers feel important. Airlines and OTAs must adapt to the changing landscape and focus on delivering customized experiences that meet the needs of the next generation of travelers.
The traditional loyalty program model is no longer effective in retaining customers. By shifting their focus towards personalized, tailored experiences to win over the next generation of travelers, they can increase customer loyalty and retention rates. The future of loyalty programs is about providing customized experiences that make customers feel valued and understood.
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Article by Peter Smith, SVP, Strategic Partnerships – Travel, Ticketing & Mobility at Cover Genius
