Amadeus and Microsoft take stock of AI adoption in aviation

Five use cases and a 12–18 month roadmap

Amadeus, the travel technology specialist, has published a strategic report developed with support from Microsoft to accelerate the adoption of agentic AI in aviation. Entitled "Airlines in the agentic age: use cases and ideas for getting started with AI", it draws on interviews with Azul, Icelandair and Southwest Airlines. The paper spotlights five areas where benefits are already tangible: automated voice rebooking, agentic commerce, smarter digital marketing, turnaround management and offer personalisation. It also sets out an operational framework for concrete deployments over 12 to 18 months, with an emphasis on data preparation and robust governance.

The first use case centres on voice rebooking: an AI agent can now identify a booking, understand a spoken request, propose alternatives, explain the fare difference and initiate payment, in multiple languages, with a smooth handover to a human adviser if needed. Amadeus says it has successfully tested this agentic AI approach and now plans to move it into production.

Other applications are aimed at expanding commercial opportunities. Agents can plan, book and assist the traveller across airline touchpoints, move beyond static rules to personalise offers, and converse with assistants such as Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT. Further upstream in the purchase journey, agents detect underperforming routes, recommend a strategy, generate creative assets and automatically allocate marketing budgets to promote those services. On the operations side, multi-agent systems track maintenance, crews and refuelling to recommend an integrated turnaround plan.

2026 will be a defining year for agentic AI in aviation

The report highlights familiar bottlenecks. Call centres quickly become saturated during disruption, lengthening wait times. Fragmented customer data hampers personalisation. Operational silos complicate real-time decision-making. And time to market for new offers and campaigns remains significant. By anchoring to distribution and payments systems and adding an orchestration layer, agentic AI automates predictable tasks, speeds execution and allows teams to focus on complex cases. The rise of consumer AI assistants is adding urgency to modernise search, distribution and servicing.

"We expect agentic AI to improve almost every airline workflow, from network planning to customer service. And for Amadeus, I see great opportunities for AI to reinforce our applications and introduce new capabilities," said Cyril Tetaz, EVP Airline Solutions at Amadeus. "This new technology will help us accelerate progress towards a smoother, better-connected journey."

Amadeus stresses that AI agents must be grounded on reliable systems to orchestrate transactions and ensure decision integrity. Airlines are therefore encouraged to verify the quality and availability of their data, adapt their APIs to agent-driven use cases, and measure value iteratively as projects progress.

"2026 will be a defining year for agentic AI in aviation. Over the next 18 months, most airlines will move from exploration to real-world deployment – embedding agents across the traveler journey and core operations," said Julie Shainock, Global Managing Director for Travel, Transport & Logistics at Microsoft.