AIRLINES OWN THE FLIGHT, BUT WHO OWNS THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP?

All of these remain important, but an increasing proportion of the passenger’s experience now happens outside the aircraft, and much of it happens through a mobile phone.

54% of global travellers now prefer to book directly with airlines, a shift IATA attributes largely to mobile apps and digital platforms (airline websites fell from 37% to 31% of bookings as web/app channels grew).

A customer may spend eight hours on an aircraft, but their relationship with the airline begins weeks or months earlier when they use a mobile app to search for a destination, compare fares, choose a ticket, add luggage, select a seat, and enter their passport information. This means that mobile is now the airline’s primary digital operating interface with the passenger, and when it works well, it removes uncertainty at every stage of travel. 

With global airline ancillary revenue hitting a record $157 billion in 2025, up from $148.4bn in 2024, and now accounting for 15.7% of total airline revenue (up from 9.1% in 2016), there’s also a huge revenue opportunity for those airlines that own the direct digital relationship. 

The commercial opportunity is bigger than a better app

Digital should be framed as growth and margin infrastructure. A better journey can increase direct booking, improve ancillary conversion, strengthen loyalty engagement, reduce avoidable service contact and give the airline better first-party insight.

Disruption is particularly important because an app that identifies the affected passenger, recommends a sensible alternative, manages connections and explains the next step can preserve a relationship that might otherwise be lost. 

AI can support this, but only when connected to reliable identity, booking, operational, baggage and loyalty data. A chatbot placed over fragmented systems will simply describe the problem more fluently.

A useful assistant must understand the passenger’s specific circumstances and help complete an action:

• Am I going to make my connection?
• Is my bag on the aircraft?
• Which alternative gets me there fastest?
• Is my existing ticket valid?
• What will happen to my hotel or transfer?
• Do I need to do anything now?

That is the difference between an airline chatbot and an intelligent travel service.

Singapore Airlines shows what consistency looks like

If there’s one airline setting the benchmark right now, it’s Singapore Airlines. Known as a brand that delivers excellent customer service onboard, and that reputation holds true on mobile. It holds 4.8* on Google Play and 4.6* on the UK App Store; a rare case of an airline app performing to the same high standard whether a passenger is on iOS or Android. That consistency matters commercially: it means every passenger gets the same quality of relationship with the brand, regardless of which phone happens to be in their pocket.

The app treats the booking as the start of the relationship rather than the end of it. Passengers can pay with KrisFlyer miles, Google Pay or Alipay, pre-select inflight meals and entertainment before departure, and generate their own baggage tags at Changi during check-in. On aircraft fitted with KrisWorld, a playlist built on the ground picks up mid-air exactly where the passenger left off.

None of this replaces the aircraft, the seat or the service Singapore Airlines is best known for. What it shows is that the same standard the airline applies everywhere else can be, and should be, applied to the digital layer too. It’s a reminder that “best airline” and “best airline app” don’t have to be two separate reputations to manage.

Global leaders show how to design around the live journey

American Airlines, Delta and United provide useful benchmarks because their products increasingly adapt to the passenger’s current situation rather than the airline’s internal structure.

American uses a dynamic home screen and includes terminal maps and end-to-end bag tracking. Delta’s “Today” experience combines boarding passes, gate updates, airport maps, bags and rebooking for cancellations or missed connections. United combines document readiness, boarding progress, connections, terminal navigation, agent contact and disruption support.

The direction all three are pursuing is the right one: organise the experience around what the passenger needs now, rather than around the airline’s internal departments.

Each still has room to sharpen specific journeys; American’s handling of partner-airline bookings and United’s baggage/upsell clarity during check-in are areas flagged by customers. But the underlying architecture is sound, and it gives every other carrier a clear pattern to build toward.

What the rest of the market can learn, and where the opportunity sits

Several major carriers already have strong foundations in place, and the next stage of growth is about extending what’s already working.

British Airways has built real strength on iOS, where its app rates about 4.5* from 879,000 reviews on the UK App Store, and its redesigned app brings genuinely useful features: faster booking, passport scanning, saved traveller details, wallet boarding passes, day-of-travel information and self-service rebooking or refund options during disruption. 

The opportunity now is to extend that same experience consistently to Android, where the redesign is only recently rolling out; closing that gap would let BA convert its iOS strength into a single, dependable standard across every device, making the direct channel measurably more valuable than any intermediary.

easyJet already spans flights and package holidays in one app, with around 313,000 reviews and a 4.3* rating on Android, live updates, and support for up to eight offline boarding passes on one device.

The natural next step is pulling everything a passenger owns; every traveller, flight, hotel, seat, bag, payment and operational update, into one persistent record. That’s a genuine opportunity to deepen personalisation, cross-sell more naturally, recover disruption faster and bring the customer back directly rather than through a third party.

Ryanair has built one of the most deeply integrated apps in the industry, supporting direct booking, check-in, boarding passes, bags, seats and its Travel Assistant, with around 376,000 reviews on Google Play. Ancillary selling is central to low-cost aviation and Ryanair does it at scale.

The opportunity here is one of sequencing and clarity: making sure that at the exact moments a passenger is checking in or heading to a gate, the essential actions are unmistakably separated from optional purchases. Getting that distinction right is likely to strengthen trust in every offer that follows, turning today’s high engagement into stronger long-term loyalty.

The bigger opportunity: mobile as growth infrastructure

Apadmi’s 2026 Travel Apps Report found that technical bugs, hidden costs and complicated experiences are major reasons people remove travel apps. It also found strong and growing interest in AI, where it creates practical value. The airlines above show that when the fundamentals are right, that interest can turn into real loyalty and revenue.

For airlines looking to close the gap on the leaders, a practical starting point is an Airline Passenger Journey Stress Test. We examine the journeys that matter most commercially and emotionally: booking, check-in, family travel, codeshares, poor connectivity, disruption, missed connections, baggage and loyalty.

We compare iOS and Android, analyse customer feedback and behavioural data, map the systems beneath the experience, identify where revenue or trust is being left on the table, and turn the findings into a prioritised roadmap and rapid prototypes.

It answers three board-level questions: 

• Where is there headroom to strengthen the direct customer relationship? 
• Which improvements would unlock the most revenue, loyalty or service efficiency? 
• What should we change first to create measurable value?

Airlines own the aircraft, the schedule and the seat. The carriers investing in the digital layer today are the ones building the relationship that keeps the customer coming back, and there’s a clear, proven path for the rest of the market to follow.