AWS sells the airline the cloud and AI services behind the system, which was built with AWS partner Cation Consulting. The AI fields every major type of question in one place, including baggage, refunds, bookings and flight disruptions, the study said.
“We needed to move from linear cost scaling to a model where customer service costs remain largely fixed as passenger volumes grow,” said Tracy Kennedy, director of customer service at Ryanair, in the study.
Since launching in October 2024, the system has answered 10 million chats with a 94% accuracy rate, according to the study.
Ryanair Breaks the Link Between Passengers and Headcount
Customer service has always been a scaling problem for airlines. More passengers mean more questions, more disrupted trips and more calls for help, which historically meant hiring more agents as the business grew.
Ryanair, which operates more than 3,900 daily flights and serves more than 700,000 customers a day, built its system specifically to avoid that, according to the case study.
The airline tested five foundation models against 12,000 real customer questions before settling on Amazon’s Nova 2 Lite, which cut reply time from 18 seconds to 2.9 seconds and made answers 25% more accurate, the study said. Ryanair simplified the setup in February, folding 12 task-specific bots into a single agent. Every answer still runs through an automated scoring system before a customer sees it.
The chat system builds on Ryanair’s earlier work automating phone calls, which already redirected 80% of inbound calls to digital channels. Combined, the phone and chat systems have saved more than 500,000 agent hours and cut the number of customer service agents Ryanair needs per passenger carried by 70%, per the study.
Airbnb and American Airlines Are Making the Same Bet
Ryanair is not the only travel company handing work to machines that used to require a person.
Airbnb’s AI assistant resolves nearly 45% of customer inquiries without human intervention, PYMNTS reported Aug. 7. That’s up from the end of 2025 when it resolved roughly a third of customer questions, CX Dive reported May 8.
American Airlines has built AI into its existing chatbot to help passengers hit by weather disruptions find alternate routes and rebook without an agent, PYMNTS reported in July 2025.
That progress raises the stakes when the AI gets something wrong. The British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal held Air Canada liable in 2024 after its chatbot invented a bereavement fare policy that didn’t exist, PYMNTS reported July 1. The bot told a grieving customer he could buy a full-price ticket and claim a discount later, a claim the airline then refused to honor. The tribunal rejected Air Canada’s argument that the chatbot was responsible for its own mistakes, ordering the airline to pay the customer 812.02 Canadian dollars (about $580).
Ryanair Wants the Bot to Sell, Not Just Answer
Ryanair’s next step could take its AI system beyond answering questions. The airline is building post-booking upselling into the same chat and phone platform, the case study said, turning a tool built to save money into one that also makes it.
“The AWS-powered solution transformed our customer service model from a cost center that scaled linearly with passenger growth into a strategic asset that improves both efficiency and customer experience,” said Stephen Keane, head of business transformation at Ryanair, in the study.
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