Europe’s Largest Airline Wants Predictive AI Models to Nip Airport Meltdowns in the Bud

If there’s one thing that’s unifying across the world, it’s that we can all agree that a canceled or delayed flight is a massive headache at best. Ryanair – the largest airline in Europe by fleet size, global passenger volume and total flights, and the second-largest airline in the world by global passenger volume – has implemented proprietary predictive AI models to help prevent airline disruptions before they lead to widespread cancellations or diversions. 

The AI models were developed by Ryanair Labs, the Ireland-based airline’s tech innovation hub launched in 2014, to more quickly and efficiently predict when weather delays, airport curfews and issues with airline crew hours are likely to disrupt passengers’ journeys. 

I spoke with Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson at the Version 1 media briefing hosted by Enterprise Ireland, the governmental economic development agency, before the International AI Summit in Dublin to discuss how the airline is using these AI models. The goal, Wilson said, is not to replace Ryanair’s core of human operators, but to give his employees advanced tools to manage and handle operational complexities across Ryanair’s 96 operational bases and its more than 3,800 flights per day. 

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“And that, by making us efficient,” he said, “translates into lower fares, better operational performance — same boring, virtuous circle, you know, ’cause that’s what the airline industry is like.”

Predictive models in practice 

Wilson said there are a lot of variables in making sure a plane is in the right place, at the right time: weather, an airplane going out of service, an airport closing to meet curfews, staff and crew showing up.  

For instance, say a crew on a plane is about to exceed the hours they’re allowed to work due to a weather delay and they’re not going to make it back to their base, yet are scheduled to work the next day. The Ryanair model is designed to recognize the disruptions this will cause and to take appropriate action. 

“If you know they’re not going to be able to do the flights the next day, there’s no point in waiting for them to come back the next morning for them to tell you that they’re out of hours,” Wilson said. “But if the model is running, it reassigns somebody else to do it, or it may just reassign them to do a flight later the next day, and you pair up the crew in a different way, that’s all.” 

AI is starting to take a larger role in airline and airport operations. In September, the Federal Aviation Administration rolled out a trial program for a new system, Strategic Management of Airspace Routes and Trajectories, around Washington, DC, airports, to use AI to mitigate delays and congestion caused by air traffic control staffing shortages. Some carriers, like American Airlines, are now using AI for flight rebooking, while others, like United, Delta and JetBlue, have partnered with third-party weather predictors, such as Tomorrow.io, to use AI systems to address route or delay issues and quickly calculate solutions. 

The future of AI in airline operations

Looking ahead, Wilson said he thinks the next major impact AI will have on airlines is in distributing flights. Specifically, as more people adopt personal AI agents – like OpenAI Dots or Meta’s Muse, both introduced just in the last few weeks – he’s thinking about whether a customer tells an agent “book me a flight” and the potential negative, costly impact that the agent books a more expensive flight due to an airline paying to be prioritized by that AI model. 

Ultimately, though, Wilson doesn’t suspect that AI is drastically changing the airline industry – at least not rapidly. “Everything changes and nothing changes, right?” he said. 

Wilson says that Ryanair’s strategy will be to find “the killer applications” of AI to better serve customers and gain a competitive edge, but, really, the humans who “execute the real stuff in flight” are the key to smooth operations. 

“The actual nuts and bolts of our industry won’t change,” Wilson said. 

“In the AI world that’s coming, we just see this as a new set of tools for fine-tuning work processes and efficiencies in doing the core model of what we’ve been successful at.” 

Editor’s note: Macy Meyer’s travel costs for the International AI Summit were covered by Enterprise Ireland. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own.