Emirates would like to know what you need before you ask: AI, biometrics and the future of flying

Dubai: Emirates is betting that the future of flying will be less about passengers asking for things and more about the airline knowing what they need before they do.

From AI that builds a profile of individual travellers to biometrics that identifies them, the airline is exploring how technology can personalise the journey from the moment a passenger starts planning a trip to the time they return home.

“We’re looking at the full end-to-end life cycle of the travel,” Keenan Hamza, Emirates’ vice-president of Innovation and New Technologies, told media on the sidelines of Forsatek, Emirates Group’s annual technology and innovation forum designed to accelerate the future of aviation, travel and tourism on Monday.

“That’s pre-travel, then onboard and then post,” he said. “At each stage, we’re looking at how to build a stronger connection with our customers.”

The ambition is straightforward: understand who the passenger is, anticipate what they may need and make the experience more relevant.

“Pre, it’s about delivering a very personalised service depending on who you are, what your profile is, if you’re travelling with kids or not. You’ll have different needs, so we want to be able to bring that service to you, depending on what your need is,” Hamza said.

The idea becomes more tangible once the passenger is onboard.

“On board again, it’s about knowing who you are,” he said. “That means that we can provide you your cup of tea or your cup of coffee before you ask for it.”

That future will not be driven by one technology alone. Hamza described it as a “collision of different technologies” — principally AI and biometrics. “We’re using the AI to build the profile for the individual, but then of course we need some form of identification, which is where biometrics comes in,” he said.

Emirates is also expanding its research and development capabilities as it experiments with these technologies. Hamza said the airline’s innovation R&D capacity is “bigger than ever”, while its robotics team has doubled in the past year.

R&D is not confined to one department. Work is also taking place across sustainability and engineering, including programmes developed with regulators.

Asked how much Emirates is investing in R&D, Hamza would not put a figure on it. Instead, he said large technology programmes are assessed on the value they can deliver. The airline is also trying to keep control of as much of the innovation pipeline as possible.

Emirates has its own robotics centre and typically starts by building and prototyping technologies internally, bringing in partners where it lacks a particular capability.

“Our aim, as far as possible, is to have our own control of our destiny and of our pipeline as much as we can,” Hamza said.

That approach is already producing technologies beyond the passenger cabin.

For example, AI is also being used to process hotel partnership contracts that were previously entered manually. The system reads documents, uploads and manages the information and creates a database around it.

Elsewhere, a drone engine inspection system is already live, while robotics are being used in logistics and cargo warehouses.

Customer-facing robotics are also being developed — but Hamza stressed that Emirates does not intend to automate away the human element of its premium service.

“We are a high-touch, high-value, high-touch organisation,” he said. “We prioritise customer service and the engagement with our staff. We’ll never replace that.” Instead, robotics could take over some of the transactional work employees currently have to perform.

The technology push is happening alongside a broader evolution in how Emirates and Dubai work together.

At Forsatek, Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing CEO Issam Kazim described the relationship between the tourism authority and Emirates as more integrated than ever. “We have never been as integrated as we are today,” Kazim said. “We are genuinely an extension of one another.”

The relationship matters because Emirates is not simply bringing passengers through Dubai International Airport. The airline and the city increasingly use passenger flows and market data to determine where to focus their efforts.

Emirates’ deputy president and chief commercial officer Adnan Kazim said the two teams meet regularly and share data.

“When we see a spike in a particular market, whether it’s Australia, China, the US, wherever it is, I pick up the phone and call Issam and say, ‘OK, is there something we can do around this market?’” he said.

The information can influence where marketing resources are deployed and which markets the two sides pursue together.

The partnership has also helped change Dubai’s role in Emirates’ network — from a place passengers simply passed through to a destination where they increasingly stay.

Issam Kazim described the progression as a deliberate shift from Dubai being a transit destination, to a stopover, then a point-to-point destination and ultimately a place visitors return to.

Adnan Kazim said the post-Covid shift was particularly visible in the growth of passengers travelling to Dubai rather than simply through it, with premium-cabin demand also helping Dubai’s five-star and beach hotels.

Emirates has also said it recovered 58 per cent of capacity in the first month after the March disruption. By today, it had restored 93 per cent of capacity and 98 per cent of its network, with the remaining routes linked to affected markets.