Mumbai London and Beyond as Airlines Deploy Agentic AI for Faster Rebooking and Fewer Delays

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For a traveller preparing to fly from Mumbai to London, the most frustrating part of a journey is rarely the flight itself. It is often the unexpected cancellation, the long customer-service queue, the scramble for another connection or the tedious search for a suitable fare. Airlines are now looking at a technology that could take much of that work out of passengers’ hands: agentic artificial intelligence, systems designed not only to answer questions but to take actions on a traveller’s behalf.

The shift is emerging as airlines move beyond traditional chatbots and begin testing AI systems that can interact with booking platforms, analyse options and complete tasks. A report released by Amadeus with Microsoft in June 2026 identifies several areas where airlines could deploy agentic AI, including automated voice rebooking, personalised offers, digital marketing, commerce and aircraft turnaround management. The research draws on discussions with airlines including Azul, Icelandair and Southwest Airlines.

From answering passengers to actually helping them

The biggest difference between conventional airline chatbots and agentic AI is what happens after a passenger asks a question.

A standard chatbot may tell a passenger that a flight has been cancelled and provide a link to manage the booking. An AI agent could potentially go further by identifying the affected reservation, examining available alternatives, explaining fare differences and helping complete the change.

Amadeus said it successfully tested an agentic AI conversational commerce solution for airline call centres. The voice-based system can conduct multilingual conversations, allow travellers to change bookings, review alternative flights, complete payments and update reservations within the conversation.

For passengers, that could be particularly valuable during periods of disruption, when thousands of travellers may be trying to contact an airline at the same time.

Instead of spending an hour trying to reach a customer-service representative after a cancellation, a traveller could eventually have an AI system handle much of the process automatically, with a human adviser available when the situation requires intervention.

India’s airlines are already moving beyond the experiment

The development is especially relevant to India’s rapidly expanding aviation market.

Air India has already deployed AI extensively across customer service. According to Microsoft, its AI.g system handles around 40,000 customer queries every day across more than 1,300 types of questions, covering areas such as booking changes and refunds. Microsoft says the system has resolved more than 13 million conversations with a reported 97% success rate.

Air India’s broader AI programme also includes disruption-management capabilities designed to communicate with passengers during flight changes and support rescheduling and ancillary services.

IndiGo is pursuing another part of the opportunity. The airline has been using agentic AI for personalised ancillary offers, including seats, meals, baggage and upgrades. Microsoft says IndiGo’s second-generation ancillary engine has doubled agent capacity and reduced execution time from 12 seconds to less than five seconds.

For passengers, the consequence could be increasingly personalised travel offers rather than identical packages presented to everyone.

The airport experience could change too

Agentic AI is not limited to the passenger-facing side of travel.

Airlines are also looking at how AI can coordinate the complicated processes that happen while an aircraft is on the ground.

A typical turnaround involves cleaning, catering, refuelling, baggage handling, maintenance checks, boarding and numerous other activities. A delay in one task can quickly affect the next departure.

Agentic systems could eventually monitor these activities, identify bottlenecks and recommend or initiate corrective actions.

That matters because passengers do not necessarily care whether an airline’s operational team used sophisticated AI. They care whether their aircraft leaves on time.

The International Civil Aviation Organization has similarly highlighted AI and big-data analytics as important tools for improving aviation efficiency, safety and sustainability. ICAO discussions have also examined applications including predictive maintenance, risk assessment and operational efficiency.

Your next flight search may involve an AI agent

Perhaps the most significant change could occur before passengers even reach the airport.

Today, a traveller normally searches several websites, compares prices, checks baggage rules and selects a flight.

Agentic travel could reverse that process.

A traveller might simply tell an AI agent:

“Find me the best flight from Mumbai to London next month. I want a morning departure, one checked bag and no connection longer than three hours.”

Instead of merely returning search results, the agent could eventually compare available options, consider the traveller’s preferences and loyalty benefits, and complete the transaction.

This creates a new battleground for airlines. Their challenge will no longer be limited to attracting passengers to their own websites. They will also need their fares, schedules, inventory and ancillary products to be accessible and understandable to the growing ecosystem of AI travel agents.

But AI could create a new problem for airlines

There is an irony to this technological shift.

AI agents can search much faster and more extensively than humans. If thousands of autonomous systems begin checking enormous numbers of flight and fare combinations, airline reservation infrastructure could face a surge in search activity without a corresponding increase in bookings.

That makes the industry’s so-called “look-to-book” challenge increasingly important.

Airlines will have to build systems capable of handling machine-driven demand without allowing endless automated searches to consume excessive computing resources.

Amadeus’ 2026 airline technology work also highlights the industry’s focus on high look-to-book ratios and more efficient airline shopping infrastructure.

Regulators are watching the technology closely

The growing role of AI in aviation also comes with a major condition: safety and accountability cannot be sacrificed for efficiency.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has been developing a human-centric framework for trustworthy AI in aviation. Its proposed regulatory work covers AI assurance, human factors and ethics, while its broader roadmap focuses on the safe and trustworthy integration of AI into aviation.

EASA has also warned that while AI can improve efficiency, data processing and error reduction, aviation professionals continue to have concerns around trust, ethics and oversight. Its 2024/2025 survey found that two-thirds of respondents rejected at least one of several hypothetical AI applications presented to them.

ICAO has likewise stressed that AI needs appropriate governance, particularly because aviation is a safety-critical environment.

For travellers, that means the future is unlikely to be one in which an AI system makes every aviation decision independently.

Instead, the industry is moving toward a model in which AI handles repetitive and predictable tasks while humans remain responsible for complex, sensitive or safety-critical decisions.

What this means for travellers

The immediate impact may be relatively simple.

Passengers could spend less time waiting on customer-service lines. Flight changes could become easier. Personalised offers could become more relevant. Disruption management could become faster. Behind the scenes, better coordination could help airlines reduce delays and make aircraft operations more efficient.

But the longer-term change could be much bigger.

The traditional journey — search, compare, book, manage and fly — could gradually become a conversation with an AI agent that follows the traveller throughout the trip.

For someone flying from Mumbai to London, that could eventually mean asking one system to find the right flight, arrange the booking, add baggage, manage a disruption and help organise the return journey.

The technology is not yet at the point where every traveller can hand over an entire trip to an autonomous agent. Airlines still have significant work to do around data, infrastructure, security, regulation and human oversight. But the direction is becoming increasingly clear.

The next big change in air travel may not be something passengers see on the aircraft at all. It could be the quiet disappearance of many of the frustrating tasks that happen before and after a flight — with AI working in the background so travellers can spend less time managing their journey and more time actually enjoying it.