Emirates partners with OpenAI to scale AI across operations
Emirates has entered a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to embed advanced AI across the airline's operations. The plan includes enterprise-wide deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, new AI literacy programs for staff, and a shared roadmap to turn high-impact use cases into production quickly.
"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," said Ali Serdar Yakut, Executive Vice President IT.
Why this matters for operations
- Faster disruption recovery: forecast issues, suggest reroutes, and coordinate resources across hubs and partners.
- Turnaround performance: standardize SOPs, surface live exceptions, and assist ramp teams in real time.
- Maintenance planning: improve A-check/B-check scheduling, AOG triage, and parts availability with better data assist.
- Crew and workforce: smarter pairing, shift planning, and knowledge retrieval for frontline teams.
- Contact center and customer ops: lower handle time, consistent messaging, and better self-service for common requests.
- Fuel and route efficiency: support analysts with scenario testing and quick access to historical learnings.
- Procurement and inventory: cleaner demand signals for spares and consumables, fewer stockouts.
- Safety and compliance: faster incident summarization, trend spotting, and document control.
How Emirates plans to execute
- Build an AI Centre of Excellence and an internal champion network to spread adoption.
- Run leadership sessions to align priorities, funding, and accountability for AI programs.
- Gain early access to OpenAI research and emerging capabilities, plus take part in accelerators and select government innovation projects.
- Stand up sandbox environments for safe experimentation with generative AI on real workflows.
- Co-develop best practices for rapid prototyping, security reviews, and production deployment.
- Roll out AI literacy programs so each role knows how to use tools like ChatGPT Enterprise effectively and safely.
Rod Solaimani, Regional Director, MENA and Central Asia at OpenAI, said: "Emirates Group has laid out a bold vision for how AI can transform the future of aviation. With this collaboration, we are 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."
What operations leaders should watch
- On-time performance, turnaround time, and disruption recovery time.
- Maintenance TAT, deferral rates, and AOG duration.
- Crew productivity, overtime, and schedule stability.
- Contact center AHT, first-contact resolution, and CSAT.
- Fuel efficiency and cost per ASK.
- Data quality scores and model output accuracy by use case.
- Adoption metrics: active users, use cases in production, time-to-value, and model rework rates.
- Governance: security posture, audit trails, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and policy compliance.
Practical steps you can apply now
- Identify 3-5 high-friction workflows (e.g., disruption ops, MRO planning, ground handling) and map decision points.
- Form small cross-functional squads (ops, IT, safety, legal) with a 30-60 day delivery window per use case.
- Stand up a secure environment with data access rules, red-teaming, and clear review gates.
- Pilot conversational tools for knowledge retrieval (SOPs, MEL, GOM) and task assist for routine forms and reports.
- Instrument every pilot with clear KPIs and a decision: scale, iterate, or retire.
- Launch role-based AI literacy so frontline teams know when and how to use the tools-and when not to.
Both organisations will align on where AI can add the most value across skills, processes, and technologies. Technology teams will focus on clean model integration, playbooks for deployment, and quick feedback cycles-so useful tools reach teams faster.
Emirates states it will continue using technology and innovation to deliver practical solutions for travellers, communities, the industry, and its portfolio of brands.
Learn more about enterprise-grade AI capabilities from OpenAI. If you're building AI literacy across operations roles, see curated training paths at Complete AI Training.
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