In the aviation industry, artificial intelligence (AI) has largely been discussed as a tool for improving automation of flight controls or even development of fully autonomous aircraft. But the business aviation industry is exploring some different uses for AI on the ground to help improve operational efficiency, according to a panel discussion of the technology on Tuesday at EBACE 2023. 

Steve Varsano, founder and CEO of London-based aircraft broker The Jet Business, explained that his company has been using AI to enhance the showroom mobile app it developed for business jet buyers. 

“What we're trying to do in our business is to try to figure out how to incorporate this AI to become more efficient in finding clients and using all the data that we've had over 10, 15, 20 years of the [customer relationship management] system,” he said. For example, AI can help aircraft brokers predict “who to call, when to call, [and] what to say…instead of going through handwritten notes and things like that.” 

Tomislav Lang, founder of German on-demand regional air mobility startup FlyV, said his company has discovered the “magic juice” for delivering decentralized market connectivity using AI technology. 

FlyV uses AI algorithms to optimize daily flight schedules based on passenger demand and operational restraints. Lang said this inherently makes FlyV’s operations more sustainable “because we will be flying on routes that are needed and not guessing whether we should spend our fuel on certain routes, which makes the whole system much more efficient.”

“A lot of what we're doing is looking at identifying patterns in the way that customers are traveling,” added Greg Jarrett, CEO of Stack, which provides a business operating system for charter brokers and operators. Jarrett said Stack is using AI algorithms to help charter companies “identify the patterns that the humans can't see.” 

Stack's AI algorithms factor in procurement data with customer requests and travel history to make decisions much faster than humans can. “It's like an in-house analytics team working on your data, telling you the places that you can be flying,” Jarrett said. 

For example, AI could determine that a customer is likely to request a trip to Geneva to attend the annual EBACE show based on their travel history. “So that AI layer on top of all the data that you're collecting in your systems is extremely powerful,” he concluded.