The Problem
As part of Air India’s Vihaan.AI digital transformation, we identified a growing friction among the airline’s most valuable customers — frequent flyers and loyalty members. Despite major improvements to the core booking engine, repeat customers were still forced to go through multi-step booking flows for routes they flew every week.
Business travelers, corporate customers, and loyalty members repeatedly booked the same city pairs, fare classes, and seat preferences, yet the digital experience treated each booking as a new journey. This resulted in wasted time, higher abandonment, and lost opportunities to deepen loyalty engagement.
What was Broken?
While the redesigned booking platform worked well for general users, it did not address the needs of repeat travelers.
Key issues included:
Frequent flyers had to repeat full booking flows
No intelligent memory of routes, seat, or fare preferences
Loyalty bookings required the same steps as first-time users
High friction reduced loyalty engagement and repeat purchases
Time-constrained business travelers faced unnecessary delays
Research & Discovery
We conducted behavioral analysis of loyalty member bookings to understand booking repetition patterns. Funnel analytics revealed that a large percentage of loyalty users booked the same routes weekly or biweekly. Customer interviews and NPS feedback highlighted a strong desire for faster repeat booking options and preference memory.
Competitor benchmarking across premium global airlines showed early experimentation with predictive route suggestions, but no airline had a true one-tap AI booking experience at scale. These insights validated the opportunity to build a differentiated loyalty-first booking paradigm.
Transformation Strategy
The product strategy focused on reducing repeat booking journeys into a single intelligent action while preserving trust, pricing transparency, and fare compliance.
We introduced a predictive booking layer that remembered preferred routes, seat choices, fare classes, payment methods, and add-ons. Ez Booking surfaced personalized recommendations on the homepage and loyalty dashboards, allowing users to complete reservations using a single tap.
The experience was designed mobile-first and integrated tightly with Air India’s loyalty, payment, and fare rule engines to ensure compliance and scalability.
My Leadership & Role
I led the UX strategy and product experience design for Ez Booking, from concept validation to launch. I collaborated with product, data science, loyalty, and engineering teams to define AI logic, experience principles, and trust signals.
I designed and governed the entire booking experience, ensured compliance with fare and regulatory constraints, and mentored designers contributing to the loyalty platform. I also extended the Air India design system to support AI-driven components and personalization modules.
What We Built
Ez Booking introduced a new booking paradigm for frequent flyers.
Key experience improvements included:
One-tap AI booking for saved and predicted routes
Intelligent memory of user preferences and payment methods
Personalized booking suggestions
Instant checkout with minimal confirmation
Mobile-first loyalty dashboard integration
Scalable personalization components within the design system
Key User Scenarios
The experience was optimized for business travelers, corporate accounts, and high-frequency loyalty members who prioritize speed and reliability.
Feature Highlights
Notable features included:
Predictive route recommendations
Preference memory for seats, meals, fare class, and payment
One-tap checkout
Smart notifications for price and schedule changes
Trust and transparency layers for AI-driven booking
Business Impact
The mobile app transformation delivered strong improvements in adoption, ratings, and engagement.
Learnings
High-performing airline apps must function as real-time travel companions, not just booking tools. Native performance, utility-first features, and personalization are key drivers of retention and trust.
Career Significance Strategy
This program positioned me as the lead driver of Air India’s mobile transformation and demonstrated my ability to modernize enterprise-scale consumer apps into award-worthy digital products.
