The next-gen passenger experience: Voice-first journeys from booking to boarding

Picture this: you step into the airport and the journey starts in conversation. No fumbling with apps, no juggling boarding passes, no tapping your way through a kiosk. The environment is listening—ready to respond to your voice.

“Check me in.” The check-in kiosk wakes up, greets you by name, and prints your bag tag.

“Add a bag.” The bag-drop belt whirs to life, scales your suitcase, and flashes a green light—done.

As you walk toward security, a voice alert in your earbuds says, “Your gate has changed to B12. Estimated walk time: 6 minutes.” No searching through the departures board. No pulling out your phone.

Later, when a delay hits, you don’t stop walking—you just say, “Rebook me on the next flight with a window seat.” A list of options appears on the nearest display. You glance, confirm with a quick, “That one,” and your new boarding pass is instantly pushed to your watch.

Throughout the journey, your voice is the key. Boarding gates respond. Lounge doors unlock. Meal orders are taken and confirmed while you’re still walking down the concourse. Even disruption recovery becomes as simple as a passing comment—“Find me the fastest connection to Denver”—with results appearing around you in real time.

This is the future of air travel, and it’s closer than most realize.

The airport infrastructure hasn’t been removed—it’s just invisible now. With artificial intelligence (AI)-driven voice technology, airlines are replacing friction with fluid, personalised journeys that build loyalty and actually listen to you. NLX, the enterprise conversational AI company enabling airlines to build scalable, natural, multimodal solutions, is making that possible. NLX has equipped global brands with conversational solutions that seamlessly connect voice, chat, and digital interactions with enterprise systems. NLX’s patented Voice+ technology is transforming voice into a dynamic interface for completing complex tasks end-to-end using two channels simultaneously.

For airlines, that means making every passenger journey conversational—from booking to baggage to unexpected disruptions—delivering the kind of seamless, next-gen experience travellers increasingly expect, and competitors will be forced to match.

The industry landscape: Stuck in the past

Booking a flight in 2025 still feels like 2005. Click through endless menus, wait on hold for an hour, pray you picked the right option in a phone tree. Meanwhile, customer service complaints in the US were up 322% since before the pandemic, according to the US DOT, with the majority concerning refunds and flight problems (such as cancellations, delays, or other deviations from airlines’ schedules).

Airlines have dabbled in AI, but what’s out there today is surface-level: bots that spit out FAQs or send flight updates, then hand you right back to the same call centre bottlenecks. And voice? Still trapped in rigid IVR systems that frustrate more than they help.

Passengers talk naturally to Alexa or Siri every day, but they can’t just say “rebook me” or “add a bag” to their airline. AI and voice haven’t been connected—until now.

The passenger lens: Expectations are already ahead

Travellers don’t want to wait. A 2024 IATA study found that 71% of travellers say they want self-service tools and prefer online or app-based booking, with 53% favouring the airline’s digital platforms. And speed isn’t optional—80% of American consumers say speed is one of the most important elements of a positive customer experience; fast resolution is what makes them stay loyal. The gap is obvious: airlines cancel hundreds of thousands of flights a year, call centres melt down, and passengers are left stranded in queues instead of conversations.

And when disruption hits, voice is the only channel people trust: 84% of travellers say personalised service in those moments decides whether they’ll book with you again. Until recently, voice couldn’t scale. Now it can. United Airlines has been one of the first U.S. carriers to launch AI-driven and voice-enabled technologies. Thanks to platforms like NLX, airlines are now able to deploy capabilities even further—bringing real, conversational voice AI into aviation today. What once looked next-gen is here, and it’s only just getting started.

The opportunity: Conversational AI at scale

Airlines don’t need another chatbot; they need a way to turn disruption into loyalty. Travellers expect to be heard and be able to rebook, redeem vouchers, or secure a hotel in seconds, not hours. The technology to make that possible isn’t futuristic—it’s here.

NLX is delivering it. Since 2018, NLX has replaced outdated IVRs and rigid scripts with intelligent, multimodal conversations that scale. At the core is Voice+, a patented technology that transforms websites, mobile apps, and IoT devices into fully voice-navigable, end-to-end experiences. Passengers can book flights, add bags, change seats, or rebook cancelled connections—seamlessly, using their voice.

Unlike legacy tools, Voice+ doesn’t just deflect calls; it drives resolution and revenue. Multimodal design syncs voice with screens, surfacing upgrades or bundled offers at exactly the right moment. For airlines, that means fewer bottlenecks, lower costs, and higher loyalty. For passengers, it means control, speed, and trust that you’re being heard.

Conversational AI isn’t about replacing humans—it’s about elevating the experience and making interactions with computers more accessible. With NLX, next-gen voice is no longer next-gen. It’s here, it works, and it’s ready to scale.

United Airlines: Proof in practice

United Airlines has already put this vision into practice with NLX. By embedding conversational AI into its ecosystem, United enables passengers to rebook flights and track bags—all without waiting for an agent. During disruptions, this reduced call centre strain and improved satisfaction by providing immediate, natural-language solutions.

Over a six-month period, United saw:

• 31% of cancellation-related calls became fully automated.
• 64% of wheelchair-access requests resolved without an agent.
• CSAT scores of 82% for cancellations and 90% for accessibility—well above the 76% industry average.

United even won the 2024 Opus Research Conversational AI Award for enabling travelers to add wheelchair or service animal requests in minutes, without staff intervention.

NLX and its Voice+ solution isn’t about distant-future speculation—it’s about giving airlines a competitive edge today. Travel may never be frictionless, but with voice-first journeys, it can feel effortless. For airlines, embracing voice-first transformation turns support from a cost centre into a service differentiator—and loyalty driver—where your customers truly feel heard.

For more like this, see:

• Agentic AI and AILA: Driving aviation’s path to sustainable growth
• 2025: The year airline payments converged with retailing and AI
• Prasenjit Paul on how technology improves the passenger experience