The airline has developed more than 30 AI tools inhouse, applying it in multiple instances, ranging from simple use cases like handling customer complaints to more complex applications like predictive decision making for the maintenance of its 300-aircraft fleet.
“Just take an example of the duty allocation system,” said Ramaswamy. “We are developing a system which can allocate tasks more efficiently. Then we wouldn’t need to hire as many people as we increase our scale by 100 or 200 aircraft more.”
Ramaswamy, who earlier headed data at Tata Consultancy Services, was handpicked by Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran to overhaul Air India’s digital backbone which was non-existent under the carrier’s erstwhile government ownership.
Rapidly evolving generative AI developed by Microsoft, Anthropic or Salesforce is helping the carrier communicate with passengers better, according to Ramaswamy. The airline’s chat bot can read through customer emails and booking tickets and take logical decisions such as whether to issue a refund or not. This has resulted in a 50% reduction in call volumes at its call centre.
Saving costs is critical for Air India which has more than Rs 26,000 crore in accumulated losses as of FY26, putting its promoter Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines under obligation to infuse more cash.
Ramaswamy said AI is also helping the airline run its operations more efficiently.On-time operation for any airline depends on multiple critical steps like deplaning hundreds of people and boarding the next group, unloading tonnes of luggage and cargo, cleaning the cabin, and ensuring fresh pilots and cabin crew are briefed and in position, often arriving on different inbound flights. Delay or disruption in any factor can have cascading impact on flight operations.
Air India is using an in-house developed AI tool to unlock operating patterns on a real-time basis. By the time a trend starts to evolve, the software has already flagged it, allowing its Mascot team to be proactive rather than reactive.
“The on-time performance tool we developed essentially is a capability that anybody in the system can use to understand it on many different levels,” he said. “Like if there is an issue with on-time performance of a particular station, we will be able to immediately understand what exactly went wrong and get a fix.”
Air India’s digital transformation has been recognised by many top bosses of the IT industry. “Air India is the first airline worldwide to deploy generative AI for customer service at scale,” said Judson Althoff, CEO, Microsoft.