How Virgin Atlantic Uses AI to Shape the Future

On this episode of Airline by Fetcherr Podcast, I am joined by Chris Wilkinson, Vice President of Pricing & Revenue Management at Virgin Atlantic. With over two decades of experience in the aviation industry, Chris has been at the forefront of incorporating advanced AI technologies into Virgin Atlantic’s operations. 

In this interview, he delves into the transformative role AI plays in pricing and revenue management, the challenges and successes of AI implementation within a legacy airline, and the measurable impacts of these technologies on efficiency and profitability.

Discover how Virgin Atlantic is leveraging Fetcherr’s AI solutions to not only enhance day-to-day operations but also to drive strategic decisions that will define the future of air travel. Chris will also discuss Virgin Atlantic’s innovative approaches towards bundled services, the integration of Fetcherr’s Large Market Model into their systems, and his visions for the future of the industry.

Omri: Welcome to the Airline Podcast Series powered by Fetcherr. For this episode, we’ve got Chris Wilkinson here in the house. He is the Vice President of Pricing and Revenue Management at Virgin Atlantic, boasting over 20 years of experience in the aviation industry. He is also a key member of the executive team and he plays a pivotal role in shaping Virgin Atlantic’s revenue management strategy. Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. For the audience that doesn’t know what you do and where you come from, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Chris: Sure. Well, I’ve been at Virgin for over 20 years as you said. I started off in finance for so many years and a few years leading the network and alliances team – where we fly and who we partner with. Then I was fortunate enough to be put on the revenue management team just before Covid hit, so nearly five years now. Me and my team work out exactly what prices we want to put into the market to try and maximize our revenue.

Omri: When you look at your role as a whole, what do you think are the key elements that someone in your position needs to have to be successful?

Chris: Well, first and foremost, we need to make sure we deliver our revenue target. So every year, we set our plans out for exactly what we want to deliver and how that shapes into the overall company’s finances. And then the biggest objective I’ve got for the year is to make sure that comes true. And so within that, the team is working on exactly what prices to put into the market to maximize revenue – whether we’re chasing more volume, so more passengers on the flight; or we’re trying to get the yields, the average amount of revenue that the average passengers pay higher. They’re the combinations that we need. But separately, really where we’re driving to is how do we not just change this year’s performance but change all of our future year’s performances. So there’s a lot of development we’re trying to do from a revenue management perspective just to try and maximize revenue in future years as well as the current year.

Omri: Thinking about the airline industry – pretty traditional industry. We haven’t seen a humongous amount of innovation in this sector probably in the recent 10 years. Now we’re finally starting to see that. From your perspective, what are the primary challenges currently impacting Virgin Atlantic or maybe rival airlines?

Chris: I think most airlines that you can talk to I think would have a common view about exactly where the industry is going and what that will look like in X year’s time, but equally everybody’s doing it pretty much the same way for the last 20 to 30 years in terms of how they control the offers going into the market. And it’s moving out of one and into the other – that’s really difficult. A lot of legacy processes need to be adapted to cope with the new technology that’s coming in.

Omri: When you think about new innovations, you can’t help but think about AI. We’re seeing this in every industry in general. How do you envision the integration of AI technologies into the airline industry and into the aviation industry? And with that being said, do you feel like that is a natural curve of what the industry needs to go through? 

Chris: Absolutely. I mean, it’s almost everywhere. I think there are multiple ways in which AI is already leaking into the aviation industry, not just in revenue management – across our contact centers and the operational areas of predicting failures on the aircraft and all those kinds of things. So it’s everywhere, but equally, I think with things like ChatGPT and LLMs coming in, it’s actually changing everybody’s workload of how they do things. And so it’s going to be absolutely huge in the future.

Omri: How was the “AI journey” adapting to your own department? 

Chris: I think that’s an ethos for all the Virgin companies. it’s the culture that we create. It’s the environment that we operate within, so everybody’s empowered to try and find new ways of developing and taking these big steps forward with the new innovations that come into the market, whether it’s AI or anything else. Equally, from our perspective, we’re totally empowered to go and have a look at what was in the market and how we could do things differently than how we’ve done them before to make proper step changes in our performance. We’ve been looking at what solutions exist with AI, how it could supplement the processes that we already had in place, and how we made it better for our people to be able to deliver more with the five to 30 people that we have in the department. 

Watch the full interview here.