Turning AI into real-world impact: Cathay Pacific on AI ROI, customer experience and workforce empowerment

The following article was published by Future Travel Experience

In this interview, Aldric Chau, Regional General Manager, Southeast Asia & Oceania, Cathay Pacific, shares his insights on enhancing CX, optimising operations and empowering employees through responsible innovation.

As the aviation industry explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and digital innovation can deliver tangible business value, airlines face the challenge of enhancing the customer experience, optimising operations and empowering employees without losing sight of the human element. Turning promising technologies into meaningful, scalable improvements requires more than experimentation; it demands clear objectives, effective collaboration and responsible implementation. In this interview, ahead of his keynote at APEX FTE EXPO (Singapore, 18-19 November 2026), Aldric Chau, Regional General Manager, Southeast Asia & Oceania, Cathay Pacific, shares his insights on measuring AI ROI, embedding innovation into everyday operations, balancing high-tech solutions with high-touch service, and empowering frontline teams to embrace change. He also explores the potential of Agentic AI to simplify passenger journeys and explains why human judgement, strong governance and a culture of continuous learning will remain essential to shaping the future of aviation.

Aldric Chau, Regional General Manager, Southeast Asia & Oceania, Cathay Pacific, is participating at APEX FTE EXPO, taking place in Singapore on 18-19 November 2026, with a keynote address focused on ‘Embracing innovation to enhance CX, optimise airport operations and empower the workforce’.

Aldric Chau, Regional General Manager, Southeast Asia & Oceania, Cathay Pacific: “One way to measure the success of innovation is the time it gives back to customers and colleagues, the quality of decisions it improves, and whether it can be repeated safely at scale.”

Chau believes the APEX FTE EXPO event theme – ‘Aviation’s New Golden Era: Higher Revenue, Greater Returns & AI ROI’ – is addressing the right challenge in terms of AI ROI. “One way to measure the success of innovation is the time it gives back to customers and colleagues, the quality of decisions it improves, and whether it can be repeated safely at scale,” Chau explains. “For me, there are three practical tests. Does it remove work rather than transfer work to the passenger? Does it help our people act with better information and less administrative friction? Can it move from a promising pilot into everyday operations across teams and markets? AI is an important enabler when adopted effectively. Aviation still depends on accountable human judgement, particularly when circumstances are unusual, or the consequences are significant. The opportunity is to combine machine speed with operational experience, supported by clear guardrails. To succeed in digital innovation, we need to learn quickly, scale selectively and make the experience feel simpler, not more digital.”

Cathay Pacific has been investing heavily in digital transformation and innovation. For Chau, the main lesson when it comes to turning new technology into tangible improvements for passengers and employees is simple: start with the problem, not the technology. “We first ask what delay, uncertainty, hand-off or repetitive task we want to remove,” Chau shares. “Then we decide whether technology is the best way to solve it. The second lesson is that a good pilot is only the beginning. To create real impact, we need to scale it into daily operations. That means redesigning processes, using reliable data, putting the right governance in place, training our people and making sure there is effective change management. The third lesson is to measure what customers and colleagues can actually feel. For customers, that could mean faster help, fewer steps or more certainty. For colleagues, it could mean better decisions, higher productivity or less time spent searching for and re-entering information. Ultimately, success is not measured by how impressive the technology is, but by whether our customers and our people genuinely find it useful.”

Balancing high tech with high touch: Using AI to enhance CX and optimise operations

A key focus for Cathay Pacific is ensuring that technology enhances the customer experience rather than simply adding more digital touchpoints to the journey. “We should not assume that more digital touchpoints automatically mean a better customer experience,” says Chau. “Self-service is only useful if it reduces effort for the customer, rather than simply shifting work to the customer. The real test is whether we can remove a step, reduce waiting, give clearer information, or make the journey easier to navigate.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help because it is becoming better at understanding context and anticipating what customers may need. This means digital experiences do not always have to be a series of screens and steps. They can become simpler, more proactive and more personal.

“At the same time, human-centricity is important for travel industry,” Chau highlights. “The aim is not to digitise every interaction, but to use technology to support our frontline teams, so they can focus more on customers when the human touch matters most. That is the idea behind a ‘high tech, high touch’ experience that we deliver at Cathay.”

There are significant opportunities for technology to improve operations, particularly in areas such as reducing friction, improving efficiency and giving employees better tools. “AI should remove the administrative distance between our people and the customer,” says Chau. “The biggest operational opportunity is not to replace judgement; it is to put better options, context and consequences in front of the people who must decide.”

At Cathay’s Integrated Operations Centre, for example, AI-supported decision tools can consider passenger connections, cargo, crew logistics and operational constraints together. During Super Typhoon Ragasa, a disruption-recovery optimizer reduced decision time significantly, supporting faster rebooking for thousands of journeys and a quicker recovery. “The value was not a clever model on its own,” Chau shares. “It was a faster, better-informed operating rhythm with humans still accountable for the decision. The same principle applies in the cockpit. In Cathay’s contrail-avoidance trial with Google, AI forecasts, satellite detection and weather intelligence were integrated with our Electronic Flight Folder, inflight connectivity and pilot and dispatcher judgement. More than 80 trial flights followed avoidance routes, and Google estimated an approximately 40% reduction in contrail warming impact on those flights. AI became operationally meaningful when it moved from the lab into an existing workflow, alongside professional judgement.”

Balancing scale with local relevance: Cathay Pacific’s digital approach across Southeast Asia and Oceania

Chau previously led Digital at Cathay Pacific and now has a regional leadership role across Southeast Asia and Oceania. He explains that the change in perspective has given him a broader perspective. “In Digital, my focus was on technology, data, platforms, governance, and how to take innovation from an idea to something that can scale across the organisation,” says Chau. “In the region, I am much closer to how those capabilities translate into business value and market-specific opportunities across nine countries. Southeast Asia and Oceania is one of the world’s fastest-growing travel regions, with rising demand and stronger links to Hong Kong. It is also highly diverse, with customer behaviours and expectations varying significantly from market to market. That has made me think more about the balance between scale and local relevance: how we apply the capabilities we have built to solve real market and customer needs, and how insights from local teams and customers should shape what we build more broadly.”

Empowering frontline teams to turn AI innovation into action

Employee engagement is critically important when introducing new technologies, because technology is a key enabler of a positive employee experience. “Frontline colleagues often see the friction first and understand its consequences most clearly, so they should help define the problem, test the solution and decide what good looks like,” Chau explains. “AI adoption is a team sport; technology teams cannot own behaviour change on behalf of the business.”

Cathay has seen this in practical ways. AI-supported, text-to-speech gate announcements allow airport teams to create more consistent multilingual messages from a mobile tool, leaving them more capacity to manage the live situation and assist customers.

Cathay Innovate and the Cathay Hackathon are designed to connect ideas with feasibility, business ownership and real-world application. “One example that gained traction through Cathay Innovate is Cathay Cargo’s AI-assisted Import and Export Control Check,” Chau shares. “It analyses shipment descriptions beyond simple keyword matching and gives frontline teams actionable context. Human review remains integral. That is empowerment in practice: the machine handles complexity at speed, while the professional retains responsibility.”

Unlocking the potential of Agentic AI: Simpler journeys, smarter interactions

In terms of emerging technologies with the greatest potential to transform the passenger experience, Chau highlights that Generative AI changed how people find and create information, while Agentic AI could go further by completing a task across systems, but only if it does so with clear authority, consent and accountability.

“The future airline apps may be less of an app and more of an intent layer,” says Chau. “A customer might say, ‘Book me a flight from Hong Kong to Singapore tonight’, rather than navigate separate screens for flight options, disruption policies, baggage and payment. A useful agent should close a task, not open three more tabs. To make that credible, airlines, airports and partners will need better interoperability, reliable identity and carefully designed handovers when the machine is uncertain.”

Multimodal technology will also make interactions more natural across text, voice and images. “Physical AI may reshape parts of the airport and engineering environment over time,” Chau explains. “But we should be wary of confusing a more human-sounding interface with human understanding. AI can be persuasive and wrong. The standard should be transparent escalation, strong auditability and human judgement at the moments that matter. The breakthrough will not be an agent that talks impressively; it will be one that resolves a real travel need safely and reliably.”

Building a culture of continuous innovation: Balancing scale, local relevance and responsible AI

Southeast Asia and Oceania is a very diverse region, so consistency cannot mean giving every customer the exact same experience. Digital helps Cathay balance scale with local relevance. “We can build common platforms and capabilities, while using data and AI to make the experience more personal and useful in each market,” says Chau. “The aim is to give customers a recognisable Cathay experience wherever they are, while still responding to what matters in each market. That means listening closely to our local teams and customers. On this front, we have also built a regional network of digital champions across functions and countries. They help run workshops, introduce new tools and ways of working, and test new ideas with technology partners and startups.”

Reflecting on learnings from Cathay’s innovation journey, Chau emphasises that using digital well is never really about the technology itself. It is about how people use it. “You need people who are willing to challenge the status quo and change how they work,” Chau shares. “We need to be prepared to take calculated risks and learn openly when something does not work. Risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. We need to consider the risk of trying something new – and the risk of inaction as well, for us to stay relevant. At the same time, technology must be used responsibly. With AI in particular, moving quickly does not mean moving without the right guardrails. In fact, robust governance and security controls can create the confidence to explore unfamiliar territory safely. Finally, innovation should not be treated as a project with a finish line. We pioneered online check-in in 2001; today, we are discussing AI and an entirely different set of capabilities. The technology will keep changing, so what matters is building an organisation that can keep learning and adapting with it.”

APEX FTE EXPO: Sharing practical lessons across airlines, airports and partners

After four years looking at issues through a Digital lens, and now from a regional leadership perspective, at APEX FTE EXPO – taking place in Singapore on 18-19 November 2026 – Chau is looking forward to bringing both viewpoints to the discussion. He is equally keen to learn from others in the room and hear how they are addressing similar challenges. “What interests me most about technology is seeing what becomes possible when people approach the same challenge from different perspectives. Aviation is a complex industry, and there is real value in sharing practical lessons across airlines, airports and partners. I am particularly interested in how organisations are scaling AI beyond pilots and turning experimentation into practical value. The challenge is not a shortage of ideas; it is how we apply them responsibly, embed them into everyday work and deliver improvements that customers and colleagues can genuinely feel.”

Turning AI innovation into measurable value for aviation

As the aviation industry enters a new era of AI-driven innovation, delivering meaningful improvements for customers and employees will depend on far more than adopting new technologies. The real opportunity lies in translating experimentation into practical, scalable solutions that simplify passenger journeys, improve operational decision-making and give frontline teams the tools and information they need to deliver exceptional service. From using AI to support disruption recovery and streamline airport processes to exploring more intuitive, personalised digital experiences, the focus must remain on creating tangible value while preserving the human judgement and accountability that are fundamental to aviation.

As Chau’s insights demonstrate, achieving this requires a people-centred approach to innovation, underpinned by responsible AI adoption, effective governance and a culture of continuous learning. Airlines, airports and technology partners all have a vital role to play in sharing knowledge, collaborating across the aviation ecosystem and ensuring that emerging technologies are embedded into everyday operations in ways that customers and colleagues can genuinely feel. These themes will be central to APEX FTE EXPO, taking place in Singapore on 18-19 November 2026, where industry leaders will explore how to turn innovation into measurable returns and realise the full potential of AI. For organisations looking to enhance customer experience, optimise operations and empower their workforce, the event will provide an important platform for exchanging practical insights and shaping the next chapter of aviation innovation.

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