Emirates and OpenAI Forge Partnership to Roll Out ChatGPT Enterprise and an AI Center of Excellence

Emirates and OpenAI strike a strategic deal to scale AI across the airline

Emirates has entered into a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to embed advanced AI across its global operations. The plan is simple: roll out ChatGPT Enterprise, upskill teams, and build the internal muscle to move fast on high-impact use cases.

Beyond tools, this is about execution. Emirates is aligning leadership, process, and technology to make AI part of day-to-day work and long-term planning.

What Emirates is putting in place

• ChatGPT Enterprise deployed across the organization, backed by enablement and governance.
• AI literacy programs to raise fluency across teams and functions.
• AI Center of Excellence to prioritize use cases, share best practices, and scale wins.
• Internal AI champions to drive adoption at the edge of the business.
• Leadership workshops for executive alignment and visibility into OpenAI's product roadmap.

Access that moves the needle

Emirates will gain early access to OpenAI research and emerging tech, giving the airline a head start on new capabilities. Both sides will also explore participation in government-backed innovation programs that support the UAE's ambition to lead in AI.

For context on the national direction, see the UAE's AI strategy (official overview).

Technical integration and speed

Technology teams from both companies will integrate OpenAI models into Emirates' digital ecosystem. Expect sandbox environments, rapid prototyping, and a clear path from proof-of-concept to production across operational areas.

If you want to understand the enterprise feature set they're leaning on, review ChatGPT Enterprise.

Leadership insight

Ali Serdar Yakut, executive vice president IT, said: "We see enormous potential for AI technology to support our business requirements, helping us tackle complex commercial challenges, strengthening our operations, and enhancing the customer experience.

"Closely working with OpenAI will make our technology investments both strategic and scalable, enabling us to deliver enhanced value to our employees and customers, fundamentally changing how we innovate, deliver value, and maintain our competitive edge in the industry."

Rod Solaimani, regional director, MENA and Central Asia at OpenAI, added: "Emirates Group has laid out a bold vision for how AI can transform the future of aviation. With this collaboration, we're proud to help them bring that vision to life - embedding intelligence across their operations, empowering teams with powerful new tools, and reimagining the travel experience for millions of customers."

Why this matters for executives

• Clear operating model: CoE plus AI champions is a proven pattern to scale adoption beyond pilots.
• Faster decision cycles: Leadership workshops keep strategy, funding, and product direction aligned.
• Capability compounding: Early access to research shortens the gap between idea and deployment.
• Talent leverage: AI literacy programs expand the number of people who can ship value with AI.

Potential high-impact use cases to watch

• Ops and turnaround: decision support for irregular ops, fleet and crew scheduling, disruption comms.
• Customer experience: service automation, multilingual support, personalized assistance across channels.
• Commercial: demand forecasting, network planning inputs, fare recommendations, merchandising.
• Enterprise enablement: coding copilots, knowledge search, document automation, compliance drafting.
• Safety and maintenance (with guardrails): log analysis, procedure retrieval, training augmentation.

Governance, risk, and measurement

• Data controls: define what data is used, how it's stored, and who can access it.
• Responsible use: policies for human-in-the-loop, auditability, and content quality.
• KPIs that matter: time-to-resolution, cost per interaction, on-time performance impact, conversion lift, and employee productivity.
• Change management: incentives for adoption, workflow redesign, and clear playbooks.

Execution blueprint you can borrow

• Start with 5-7 priority use cases tied to P&L and operational KPIs.
• Stand up a small CoE with product, data, security, and delivery leads.
• Create a sandbox, ship weekly prototypes, and track value by use case.
• Standardize prompts, patterns, and safety checks; share them org-wide.
• Scale what works; sunset what doesn't-fast.

Where to upskill your teams

If your organization is building similar AI literacy programs, these resources can help:

• AI courses by job role for role-specific adoption.
• ChatGPT-focused training for practical workflows and prompts.

The takeaway: Emirates is treating AI as an operating system for the business, not a side project. The structure is in place-platform, people, and process-to turn intent into measurable results.