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Artificial intelligence has quickly become the centerpiece of travel innovation. Airlines use it to sharpen forecasting, speed up service, and personalize digital touchpoints. But as the travel sector embraces AI, a divide is emerging between companies that treat it as a plug-in enhancement and those that are redesigning their platforms so intelligence is native at every layer, including in the retailing systems that let airlines design, price, package, and sell their products across every channel.
IBS Software falls firmly into the latter camp. Instead of layering AI onto individual features, the company is rebuilding its platform so that data, automation, and contextual decision-making are foundational. As Chris Branagan, CTO at IBS Software, explained, the industry is still dominated by “AI add-ons,” a pattern that no longer delivers meaningful transformation. Teams must “think AI-first, not AI as something tacked onto the side,” he said. 
To do that, IBS had to rethink everything — from core architecture and data models to how frontline employees interact with the system. That evolution laid the groundwork for the company’s expanded collaboration with AWS.
Beyond Hosting: Co-Engineering With AWS
IBS has partnered with AWS for years, but its new Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) marks a deeper shift toward co-engineering rather than traditional cloud hosting. The two companies now work side by side on architecture, AI frameworks, and long-term product design.
Branagan described AWS as “almost an extension of our architecture arm,” noting that the teams regularly tackle difficult design challenges together. “We go to them with problems, and they’ll deep dive with us to figure them out,” he said. IBS often receives direct access to AWS product teams, which ensures the airline platform aligns with the latest cloud-native and AI-first design standards.
This collaboration isn’t limited to engineering. It also includes workshops, go-to-market support, and co-created frameworks, which serve as shared blueprints and playbooks that guide how the platform is designed and scaled. Branagan emphasized that AWS’s involvement is hands-on throughout: “They’re part of every stage of design and build. It’s a multi-year engagement with deep links across our teams.”
This level of integration underscores the significance of what IBS and AWS are building together. “AWS doesn’t do many SCAs — only a handful in recent years,” Branagan said. “They’re selective, and they see this as a major opportunity to help build a new kind of airline platform.”
Bringing AI to Life: Real-World Use Cases
With this new foundation in place, IBS is applying AI across airline retailing and operations in ways that go beyond simple automation. The company’s product teams were challenged to rethink workflows from the perspective of real users — from crew schedulers to retail managers — and identify where AI could remove friction and surface smarter choices.
“Instead of building point solutions, we stepped back and looked at the journey from the user’s perspective,” Branagan said. “What do they actually do day to day? How can AI take away the repetitive work and highlight the decisions that really matter?” 
In iRetail, IBS Software’s AI-first retailing platform for airlines, this shift creates deeply personalized, emotionally intelligent retail experiences. Branagan explained it with a simple scenario: “If someone’s flying from the UK to the Faroe Islands in October, there’s a good chance they’re going to play golf. The system should recognize this and tailor the offer, perhaps by reducing the price of golf club carriage or surfacing a relevant partner product. It’s essentially the Amazon retail model applied to travel.” 
On the operational side, IBS’s iFlight platform utilizes agent-like models to assist airlines in recovering from disruptions. When a delay or equipment issue triggers a cascade of impacts, the system analyzes available options and presents alternative solutions. “If a plane is delayed, the agents will look at every scenario — crew, aircraft swaps, scheduling impact — and come back with a set of viable choices,” Branagan said. “We don’t let the system make the choice. We give operators the best information so they can decide.” 
This hybrid approach, where AI does the groundwork and humans make the final call, is a central pillar of the company’s AI-first philosophy.
Trust and Ethics in an Automated World
As AI grows more autonomous, trust and responsible design become critical. IBS’s approach blends technical guardrails with rigorous testing and strict governance over how AI models are built.
According to Branagain, the company has been focused on designing its AI roadmap with safety in mind. “We choose tools we can control and avoid ones we can’t put guardrails around,” he explained, noting that certain publicly available models don’t meet the company’s standards for safety. IBS also restricts shadow IT, insisting that development teams use approved tools and environments to protect airline data and company IP. 
Testing also plays a major role. “Anything we launch goes through extensive testing across real-world scenarios,” he said. Additionally, every product undergoes CREST-accredited penetration testing before release. “We try to break it before anyone else can. It’s about protecting our reputation and making sure anything we deliver is genuinely safe and reliable.” 
Value is another guardrail. “These systems take time and resources to build,” he said. “So we have to be sure every AI capability we deliver really adds value for customers.” 
The Road Ahead: Why the Future Is AI-First
The aviation industry is advancing toward a future where AI plays a central role in how airlines operate, make decisions, and serve travelers. As autonomous agents become more capable, systems will increasingly interpret signals, exchange information, and propose solutions before human users even notice a problem.
Branagan believes agentic AI will be a defining part of this evolution. “Agents are already part of what we’re building,” he noted. “You can have a single agent or multiple agents interacting, each solving a different problem and passing the results along. They essentially hold a conversation to arrive at the best outcome.” 
This model — collaborative, contextual, and proactive — hints at what airline technology will look like in the coming decade. It also reinforces why AI-first architecture matters: legacy systems simply cannot support the degree of autonomy and agility the future will demand.
With AWS as a long-term partner, IBS is building that future in a way that blends innovation with responsibility. The shift is already underway, and its impact will be felt across operations, retailing, and the traveler experience.
The result is an industry gradually moving from reactive processes to predictive, personalized, and AI-orchestrated journeys, raising the bar for airline innovation.
For more information about IBS Software, click here.
This content was created collaboratively by IBS Software and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.