Playbook: How to deploy AI to transform airport operations

Airports worldwide are exploring how artificial intelligence can enhance operations, improve resilience, elevate passenger experience, and strengthen safety. Yet many face the same obstacles: legacy infrastructure, fragmented data systems, unclear governance, uneven workforce readiness, and uncertainty about which AI opportunities genuinely deliver value.

To help address these challenges, the Airports AI Alliance has produced a Playbook that offers a structured, strategic pathway forward. Spanning 85 pages, this members-only resource is designed for airport executives, CIO/CTO teams, operations leaders, innovation units, digital transformation managers, and regulators seeking a practical, evidence-based framework for progressing from early experimentation to enterprise-level AI deployment.

A 10-page extract of this comprehensive Playbook is now available to download, providing a first look at its core insights and guidance.

The Playbook draws on insights from senior airport leaders at Atlanta, Barbados, Cincinnati, Edmonton, Fraport, Incheon, MAG, Miami, Schiphol, Toronto Pearson, Vienna, Zurich, and others; contributions from technology and strategy experts at AWS, BCG, Bentley Systems, NVIDIA, Wipro, Xovis and Zensors; and real-world case studies demonstrating what successful AI adoption looks like in complex, safety-critical environments.

In the full, 85-page Playbook, you’ll learn:

How to assess AI readiness across leadership, culture, data quality, and infrastructure
How leading airports prioritise use cases using transparent, outcome-driven frameworks
How to design governance models covering ethics, cybersecurity, compliance, and risk
How to modernise data and computing systems using hybrid cloud and federated stewardship
How to move from pilots to scalable AI through disciplined proof-of-concept cycles
How to future-proof AI strategy through enterprise platforms, workforce development, and continuous improvement

Become a member of the Airports AI Alliance now to receive access to the complete Playbook.