Air India Rebuilds Its App With In-House Booking, Payments, and AI

Key Points

• Air India is prioritizing ownership of its digital infrastructure—an in-house booking engine and proprietary payment platform—to gain speed and control, enabling rapid adoption of fast-moving India-specific payment options like UPI without waiting on external vendors.
• The revamp embeds generative AI throughout (eZ Booking natural-language itineraries, the AI.g virtual agent, AEYE Vision, and Apple CarPlay/Intelligence integrations) and adds offline access to core tools plus direct in-app disruption assistance for hotels and transport.
• The airline is positioning for a future 'one-stop' travel platform bundling flights, hotels and ground transport, aligned with IATA's upcoming 'One Order' standard, with the Air India Express app slated for a matching upgrade.

Summary

Air India has relaunched its mobile app with a strategy centered on owning its core technology stack rather than relying on third-party vendors. The overhaul introduces three foundational capabilities: an in-house booking engine that lets the app sell tickets directly, a proprietary payment platform that resolves checkout friction and enables rapid adoption of India-specific payment innovations like UPI, and expanded disruption-assistance tools that allow passengers to be assigned hotels and ground transport directly through the app without waiting for a human agent. Generative AI is woven throughout the relaunch—including the eZ Booking tool for natural-language and voice itinerary creation (in English, Hindi, French and German), the AI.g virtual agent, AEYE Vision computer-vision data capture, and Apple CarPlay/Apple Intelligence integrations—alongside offline functionality that keeps core tools like My Trips and flight status accessible without connectivity, even in-flight. Looking ahead, CDTO Satya Ramaswamy outlined ambitions for a "one-stop" platform bundling hotels and ground transport with flights, personalized AI agents, and alignment with IATA's forthcoming "One Order" standard, with plans to eventually bring the Air India Express app onto the same platform.