This year’s Aviation Festival Americas showed an industry ready to turn economic headwinds into tailwinds that spur the next wave of competitive innovation. The event landed in the wake of Spirit Airlines’ closure and ongoing macroeconomic volatility for fuel pricing, which reflect the real pressures facing the sector.
Years of operational focus have put the industry in a stronger position to compete on guest experience, seen by many participants as the next battle.
The brands who can make the journey more reliable and joined up: from booking and disruption handling to baggage, accessibility, and on-time performance. Smooth operations are about efficiencies, but they also shape every moment that matters to the guest.
The lasting impact of customer experience
Several discussions revealed a shift in strategic thinking from pure cost and operational efficiency toward customer engagement, loyalty, and long-term value. BermudAir CEO Adam Scott, for example, spoke about making NPS scores and loyalty program performance central pillars of his growth strategy. As cost volatility challenges models built on margin protection alone, loyalty has become the backbone of long-term stability.
Efficiency and experience are not competing objectives. Empowered frontline staff are the ultimate drivers of passenger satisfaction, delivering timely, high-quality services that keep flights on time and customers comfortable. Here is where AI can identify and cover the gaps, from rapid defect resolution to smart workforce scheduling.
Beyond airlines and airports, the whole supply chain needs to be aligned behind the intended guest experience. Tightly managing suppliers in areas like wheelchair access and baggage handling mean validating the quality and frequency of the services, which isn’t always possible. The question is a data issue: surfacing the right information to coordinate with suppliers and monitor their customers’ experience, as well as their own billing.
Fuel cost volatility is forcing a broader view of performance
Disruption in the Middle East has an undeniable impact on the P&L, sending jet fuel prices up by 70% year-on-year and adding a projected $100 billion to the collective fuel bill of the industry (IATA, 2026). The recency, urgency, and existential nature of this challenge was a dominating theme at the conference.
Airlines are doubling down on reducing their fuel consumption, where optimizing non-regulated fuel requirements like arrival delay fuel can save millions per year across the fleet. However, the lasting impact of fuel prices is forcing airlines to think more flexibly about their entire cost base and operating model.
The opportunity is to treat efficiency and experience as connected outcomes, not competing priorities. Better fuel planning, smarter maintenance, improved workforce scheduling, and stronger supplier governance all reduce cost exposure. But they also reduce delays, cancellations, and frictions for passengers. In that sense, operational performance is customer performance.
All eyes are now on the potential of AI to uncover opportunities for greater streamlining through automation and decision intelligence to pull strategic levers that optimize operations alongside fluctuating costs, but to protect the guest experience when conditions change.
AI ambition is being grounded by delivery
The agenda was packed with announcements and panel discussions about AI: how AI can influence pricing models, support frontline workers, and improve customer-centricity. The enthusiasm was palpable in executive keynotes, but discussions on the ground with practitioners showed the reality: aviation is no exception to the “Proof of Concept purgatory”, as one leader called it, that many industries are facing right now.
The AI use cases are strong and validated by need. Demand has recovered post-pandemic, but aviation operators remain vulnerable due to their assets, aging fleets, supplier networks, and workforce capacity. It is from these demands that innovative solutions are born. Now, it is a scaling problem.
The data necessary to power autonomous solutions is a key hurdle. The range of maturity – from highly regulated in-flight data to paper-based maintenance work orders – fragments the data sources. The problem is multiplied by the industry’s reliance on supplier services such as baggage handling, wheelchair assistance, and security, where data critical to the end-to-end journey sits across multiple systems and varies in quality.
The AI use cases that will define airline, cargo, and airport operations are those where the right data is defined, identified, and made accessible. Leaders must invest in modern data platforms and AI-enhanced data engineering, modeling, and quality to turn data locked in semi-structured and unstructured formats — from supplier invoices to ATA codes — into AI-usable insight.
For the guest, that matters because AI at scale is not about abstract innovation. It is about giving planners, technicians, airport teams, customer service agents, and suppliers the intelligence to make better decisions before disruption becomes visible.
Supplier performance is instrinsic to guest experience
Guest experience is not only up to airlines and airports themselves. Supplier management is often a blind spot with real customer and financial consequences, especially in areas such as wheelchair access, baggage handling, and security. Many organizations rely on these services while paying invoices without being able to validate the quality, frequency, and timeliness of delivery.
That creates a dual risk. The organization may be overpaying for services it cannot verify, while customers experience the consequences of missed, delayed, or inconsistent service. In a sector where loyalty is shaped by moments of vulnerability — a delayed bag, an accessibility failure, a missed connection, a long queue — supplier performance becomes a direct part of the brand promise.
The question for airline and airport leaders is a data issue: how to surface the right information to coordinate better with suppliers, monitor service delivery, validate billing, and understand the impact on customers. Better supplier visibility is not only a procurement opportunity. It is an experience opportunity.
Resilience is the word of the moment
The festival opened with a powerful keynote from the CEO of LATAM, Roberto Alvo, who reflected on the airline’s resilience through shockwaves like COVID by approaching operations flexibly, like an accordion: expanding capacity when demand rises and contracting quickly when it drops. This was the backdrop for the remainder of the event, where the search for resilience in finance, operations, and technology was the primary goal.
In an industry where macroeconomic factors can destabilize organizations quickly, carriers investing in data infrastructure are positioning themselves to absorb shocks and continue to grow. But resilience should not only be measured in the ability to protect margins. It should also be measured in the ability to protect the customer experience when pressure hits.
The aviation organizations best placed to win will be those that turn operational maturity into customer confidence. After years of focusing on operations for cost, the sector is now better set up to compete on experience. Smooth operations will still save money — but their greater strategic value may be in creating journeys that feel reliable, responsive, and worth choosing again.
