SoarAI

Munich Airport's commercial chief also runs its IT and digital teams, and he sees AI as the equivalent of critical infrastructure. On its own, he says, the airport has access to only a fraction of the data, which is why he makes the case for pooling it with Lufthansa and Miles & More. He also explains what happened when five new members of his digital team turned out to be AI agents.

Episode summary

Dr Jan-Henrik Andersson is Chief Commercial Officer at Munich Airport. In this episode of theSoarAI podcast, he argues that AI is far beyond a use case for an airport: it is the equivalent of critical infrastructure. He points to image recognition at security, defence against cyberattacks and insight into what customers want. He came from retail and wholesale, where he could see everything about his customers, and found himself "blind" at the airport. His answer was to share rather than own the data. Munich Airport, Lufthansa and Miles & More started a three-way partnership two years ago, he says, with no business model agreed upfront: three years of test, measure, learn, and an agreement to find a way to share any extra revenue or profit.

Munich Airport has a digital community of more than 80 people, by his count, and by his estimate invents around a quarter of its solutions in-house. He talks about AI scanners that check rental cars for damage, a BOSS offer that gives access to the brand's entire range, linked to last-mile delivery, and an ageing workforce, with almost a third of staff retiring in the next five to six years. Asked where he would put his own money, he picks cybersecurity and physical security, pointing to the threat from drones.

What you will hear

• Why every hassle at security screening becomes lost revenue on the commercial side
• The rental-car damage scanners that, he says, drew no customer complaints
• How much Munich builds itself, and the risk, if you rely only on outsiders, of being sold a solution to a problem that may not exist
• Doubling the Copilot and Claude licences, and why the hours saved are counted by activity, not by employee
• The case for robots in heavy baggage work, trade unions as partners, and moving loaders and bus drivers into supervising autonomous buses
• His case for pooling data with Lufthansa and Miles & More, in a partnership that started with no business model agreed upfront
• Drones, multi-sensor AI and why one interruption is "like an oil pump just dripping"
• The agents that joined his digital team, and an idea from Peter Bellew that he takes on as a personal challenge

Notable quotes

"This is not an industry that's driven by having kerosene in your blood, but data, thus AI, equivalent to infrastructure."

"You never own a customer."

"No one, and I'm saying this explicitly to provoke, no one ever will have the capability nor the funds to capture the entire journey."

About the guest

Dr Jan-Henrik Andersson is Chief Commercial Officer at Munich Airport. He joined the airport's management in November 2021, responsible for commercial and security, from HAVI Supply Chain, where he was Global Chief Commercial Officer. His earlier career spans trade, hospitality, logistics and services. [LinkedIn]

About the hosts

Shashank Nigam is CEO of SimpliFlying, a leading aviation strategy firm with more than 18 years of experience working with 150+ organisations. SoarAI is our new practice covering how artificial intelligence is being built and deployed across the sector.

Peter Bellew is Founder of Dooks Capital, former CEO of Malaysia Airlines and former Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair and Riyadh Air. Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.

About the SoarAI podcast

SoarAI is the world's first podcast on artificial intelligence in aviation. SimpliFlying brings you in-depth and unfiltered conversations with aviation leaders on how the industry is evaluating, implementing and scaling AI in the real world.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. New episodes of SoarAI drop every fortnight.

Links

• SoarAI podcast:https://simpliflying.com/ai/podcast
• SoarAI Advisory:https://simpliflying.com/ai
• Munich Airport, Lufthansa and Miles & More form a partnership for shopping at the airport:https://futuretravelexperience.com/2024/07/munich-airport-lufthansa-and-miles-more-form-unique-partnership-for-even-more-attractive-shopping-experience
• AI improves Munich Airport's car rental experience:https://www.internationalairportreview.com/news/183883/ai-improves-munich-airports-car-rental-experience/

Saudia's transformation chief explains how ideas get picked for production, and where he draws the line: anything that could compromise safety, security or the people the airline serves and employs.

Episode summary

Dr Ibraheem Sheerah is Chief Transformation Officer at the Saudia Group. In this episode of the SoarAI podcast, he explains how the airline starts with its strategy and the needs of its guests, then works back to the AI tools. The Travel Companion, the AI assistant Saudia launched with Accenture in 2024, is designed to be proactive: it should know when a flight is going to be disrupted and offer options early, from the next flight to a refund. Saudia tracks it with CSAT, NPS and operational measures such as on-time performance. On the commercial side, he describes analytical AI reading customer preferences to shape which routes fly each season, with load factor, RASK and market share as the signals, and what he calls a push model, using generative AI models within Amadeus to offer ancillaries to customers.

He is clear that AI will support staff rather than replace them. Groups travelling for Hajj and Umrah still need people to look after them, and in operations such as crew scheduling, keeping a human in control is, in his words, non-negotiable. New ideas go to a digital innovation hub the team calls "the kitchen", which scores them on doability, complexity and cost before anyone writes a business case. Asked what he would invest in, he points to the airline's data layer, along with infrastructure, data governance and cybersecurity. He also talks about how he uses Claude, agents and Copilot in his own work, and a dream of loyalty points that could be exchanged between airlines and spent like a currency.

What you will hear

• What the Travel Companion is meant to do at each touch point, and how it should warn passengers about a disruption before they ask
• How Saudia uses AI with Amadeus, the partner behind its move to offers and orders, for personalised ancillary offers and seasonal route planning
• Where AI stops when serving Hajj and Umrah groups, and why crew scheduling still needs a human in control
• Partnership discussions with HUMAIN, the PIF-owned AI company, and why keeping Saudia's data local matters
• The route from "the kitchen" to a business case to a cross-functional project team, plus hackathons with startups and feedback sessions with customers
• What boarding Saudia could feel like in 2030, and the one belief about AI where he parts company with most of the world

Notable quotes

"It starts with the needs of the customers and ends with the needs of the customers."

"Having a human in control, it's non-negotiable, even from the regulator point of view."

"We do not see organisation structures, we see cross-functional teams."

About the guest

Ibraheem Sheerah is Group Chief Transformation Officer at Saudia, where he leads transformation and strategy across the Saudia Group, including flyadeal, Saudia Cargo and Saudia Technic. He began his career as an engineer, worked at Advanced Electronics Company and Saudi Railways Company, and from 2016 to 2021 held leadership roles in Saudi Vision 2030 programmes, including the Privatisation and Quality of Life programmes. [LinkedIn]

About the hosts

Shashank Nigam is CEO of SimpliFlying, a leading aviation strategy firm with more than 18 years of experience working with 120+ organisations. SoarAI is our new practice covering how artificial intelligence is being built and deployed across the sector.

Peter Bellew is Founder of Dooks Capital, former CEO of Malaysia Airlines and former Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair and Riyadh Air. Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.

About the SoarAI podcast

SoarAI is the world's first podcast on artificial intelligence in aviation. SimpliFlying brings you in-depth and unfiltered conversations with aviation leaders on how the industry is evaluating, implementing and scaling AI in the real world.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. New episodes of SoarAI drop every fortnight.

Links

• SoarAI podcast: https://simpliflying.com/ai/podcast
• SoarAI Advisory: https://simpliflying.com/ai
• Saudia launches its AI-powered Travel Companion: https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2024/04/saudi-launches-innovative-digital-platform-powered-by-advanced-ai-offering-personalised-solutions/
• Saudia moves to Orders with Amadeus Nevio: https://www.businesstravelnewseurope.com/Air-Travel/Saudia-moves-to-Orders-with-Amadeus-Nevio

Turkish Airlines writes most of its own software and is building an offer-order retailing platform in-house, and plans to sell it to other airlines. The executive in charge of product development explains where AI fits in, and what the airline has learnt from putting its flights into ChatGPT and Claude.

Episode summary

Yılmaz Goralı runs airline retailing product development at Turkish Technology, the technology arm of the Turkish Airlines group. In this episode of the SoarAI podcast, he explains why a group that already builds its own passenger service system, booking engine, payment and loyalty systems decided at the end of 2023 to build modern airline retailing as well.

He sees three uses for AI: building products and code, working alongside staff as a teammate, and serving passengers. One revenue manager covering Istanbul–Frankfurt cannot scan the next twelve months alone, so the system should flag what needs action. A family heading home from Lapland should hear about a likely blizzard a day early, along with an offer of an extra night. He also covers why he treats an AI chat as a sales channel with its own rules, and why airlines that keep selling static fares to AI agents could end up as white-label carriers.

What you will hear

• Why Turkish Technology became a company in its own right in 2021, and why the group builds most of its software instead of buying it
• What the airline's AI apps do today, what they don't do yet, and a proof of concept connecting MCP to Turkish Airlines' own NDC system
• Details about the MCP server and the app with 14 capabilities in ChatGPT and Claude that Turkish Technology's digital lab has released
• Why performance is the first thing to measure when customers try something new, and why it is too early for conclusions
• Where he would put his own money: the signals that shape a travel decision, including the demand airlines never see
• Why safety is the place to be cautious, and what a startup should bring if it wants to sell to Turkish Airlines

Notable quotes

"I'm not going to sugarcoat that we did everything and we figured it out."

"We envision a future where airlines are not using AI as a tool, but a teammate."

"Otherwise, the best thing we could do is to replicate the current systems and processes, and this is not what we are here for."

About the guest

Yılmaz Goralı is Vice President, Airline Retailing – Product Development at Turkish Technology, the technology company of the Turkish Airlines group. He has almost three decades of experience in travel technology and works on the group's offer-order retailing platform, which Turkish Technology plans to market to other airlines. [LinkedIn]

About the hosts

Shashank Nigam is CEO of SimpliFlying, a leading aviation strategy firm with more than 18 years of experience working with 120+ organisations. SoarAI is our new practice covering how artificial intelligence is being built and deployed across the sector.

Peter Bellew is Founder of Dooks Capital, former CEO of Malaysia Airlines and former Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair and Riyadh Air. Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.

About the SoarAI podcast

SoarAI is the world's first podcast on artificial intelligence in aviation. SimpliFlying brings you in-depth and unfiltered conversations with aviation leaders on how the industry is evaluating, implementing and scaling AI in the real world.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. New episodes of SoarAI drop every fortnight.

Links

• SoarAI podcast: https://simpliflying.com/ai/podcast
• SoarAI Advisory: https://simpliflying.com/ai
• Turkish Airlines connector in Claude: https://claude.com/connectors/turkish-airlines
• IATA modern airline retailing business reference architecture: https://www.iata.org/en/programs/airline-distribution/retailing/business-reference-architecture/

Singapore Airlines has explored about 400 AI use cases and has around 100 in production. Its technology chief explains the framework that decides what ships, why staff build their own tools, and why the CEO pushes harder than IT does.

George Wang runs technology at Singapore Airlines, including its AI and digital transformation strategy. In our second Soar.AI podcast episode, he explains how an airline with a fast-follower reputation on technology became, in April 2025, the first major carrier to formalise a collaboration with OpenAI. Multiple things led up to this moment: a digital innovation blueprint from 2018, an AI blueprint that went to the board in July 2023, a three-way test of impact, risk and ease of implementation, and a rule that exploration is not a phase in itself but a route to production.

As a result of these efforts, customer satisfaction with the airline's chatbot almost doubled after the move to generative AI. The flight recommender saves customers around 30 minutes on a search for the cheapest fare or the fewest miles across flexible dates. Jarvis, the airline's internal AI agent, lets business staff build and deploy their own tools without involving IT, under access controls IT still sets. He also explains where AI has fallen short, why the breakthroughs so far are in language rather than physical intelligence, and why he expects the technology itself to become a commodity.

What you will hear

• Why an airline that follows on technology and leads on service moved early on AI, and what Singapore's research agencies, universities and regulator had to do with it
• The three-dimension framework, impact, risk and ease of doing, that sorts 400 candidate use cases into three pillars: customer, operations and staff
• How the flight recommender and the generative chatbot were judged on customer experience first, with productivity as a side benefit
• The multi-partner, multi-model approach: what OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce each do, and why Singapore Airlines acts as alpha customer for products other airlines will later buy
• Jarvis: how staff build their own AI tools inside it, how IT keeps control without getting in the way, and why classroom training is forgotten within a week
• The two hackathons of 2023, one for IT and one for business staff, and the use cases engineers and overflight planners brought to them
• Why four years is too long a horizon for AI, and what the chairman asked when the innovation budget came up for approval

Notable quotes

"Access to all this technology itself is not a competitive advantage."

"Training is the starting point, but not the end solution."

"Technology should be invisible."

About the guest

George Wang is Senior Vice President Information Technology at Singapore Airlines, responsible for the airline's IT and digital transformation strategy, including its work in AI and emerging technologies. He took the airline's AI blueprint to its board in July 2023 and is on record for its collaborations with OpenAI and Salesforce. [LinkedIn]

About the hosts

Shashank Nigam is CEO of SimpliFlying, a leading aviation strategy firm with more than 18 years of experience working with 120+ organisations. Soar.AI is our new practice covering how artificial intelligence is being built and deployed across the sector.

Peter Bellew is Founder of Dooks Capital, former CEO of Malaysia Airlines and former Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair and Riyadh Air. Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.

About the Soar.AI podcast

Soar.AI is the world's first podcast on artificial intelligence in aviation. SimpliFlying brings you in-depth and unfiltered conversations with aviation leaders on how the industry is evaluating, implementing and scaling AI in the real world.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. New episodes of Soar.AI drop every fortnight.

Links

• Soar.AI podcast: https://simpliflying.com/ai/podcast
• Soar.AI Advisory: https://simpliflying.com/ai
• Singapore Airlines and OpenAI, 25 April 2025: https://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/us/corporate/newsroom/press-release/
• Singapore Airlines and Salesforce, 12 March 2025: https://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/us/corporate/newsroom/press-release/

Virgin Atlantic was the first airline to put an app inside ChatGPT. Its chief customer officer tells us what it cost, what it earned and why letting passengers dodge fare rules was part of the deal.

Episode summary

Juha Jaervinen runs everything at Virgin Atlantic that a passenger can see. Brand, marketing, loyalty, communications, the clubhouses and the trip itself all report to him. This episode puts figures on the airline's AI Concierge, built with OpenAI and Tomoro. Five months in, it had handled half a million conversations, sold around £1m of flights and cut handovers from chat to the contact centre by 30%.

He is equally frank about the failures, including a Concierge that taught customers how to dodge fare rules. He explains why Virgin Atlantic chose to lead on customer-facing AI and to trail on NDC and offer-order; how it launched South Korea without a photoshoot; why reducing cabin waste with AI is his next target, and why it's about fuel, not food; and where he would put his own money — a tool that prices seats and cargo together.

What you will hear

• The path from web concierge to native app to the first airline app inside ChatGPT, and the two years of integration beneath it — including the distribution advantage that no competitor can replicate
• The metrics Virgin Atlantic tracks, and the one its customer chief is careful to qualify
• Why every AI proposal at the airline starts with the passenger's trip rather than the cost line
• What comes next: onboard retail over Starlink, a clubhouse that knows you are ten minutes away, cultural briefs for crew
• Why "flashy passenger people" should do a stint in cargo — and the million-dollar blind spot most airlines refuse to see

Notable quotes

"AI is not there to take your jobs away. It actually makes your role as a human more meaningful."

"When you ask our most frequent flyers why they fly with us, they say: because of your people."

About the guest

Juha Jaervinen is Chief Customer Officer at Virgin Atlantic, responsible for the end-to-end customer experience, brand and marketing, loyalty, communications and the airline's clubhouses. He previously held senior commercial roles at Finnair, where his remit covered passenger and cargo revenue and the network. [LinkedIn]

About the hosts

Shashank Nigam is CEO of SimpliFlying, a leading aviation strategy firm with more than 18 years of experience working with 120+ organisations. Soar.AI is our new practice covering how artificial intelligence is being built and deployed across the sector.

Peter Bellew is Founder of Dooks Capital, former CEO of Malaysia Airlines and former Chief Operating Officer of Ryanair and Riyadh Air. Dooks Capital backs early-stage technical founders building AI for airline, airport, and ground operations intelligence.

About the Soar.AI podcast

Soar.AI is the world's first podcast on artificial intelligence in aviation. SimpliFlying brings you in-depth and unfiltered conversations with aviation leaders on how the industry is evaluating, implementing and scaling AI in the real world.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. New episodes of Soar.AI drop every fortnight.

Links

• Soar.AI podcast: https://simpliflying.com/ai/podcast
• Soar.AI Summit + Demo Day: https://simpliflying.com/ai/summit
• Virgin Atlantic Concierge:https://corporate.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/media/press-releases/virgin-atlantic-launches-personal-concierge.html
• Virgin Atlantic app in ChatGPT: https://corporate.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/media/press-releases/virgin-atlantic-takes-off-in-chatgpt.html
• Soar.AI advisory: https://simpliflying.com/ai