American Airlines has quietly been rolling out a new booking tool. The new AI-powered feature allows travelers to search for flights based on the kind of trip they want to have, rather than the specific airports they want to fly to and from.
“People are more and more wanting to look for experiences when they travel,” Anshuman Singh, American’s Managing Director of Customer Experience – Digital Transformation told USA TODAY during a virtual demonstration of the tool on Sept. 30.
“Within the scope of these prompts you can take it to ‘I want to travel with my family for a trek on Thanksgiving break,’” he said.
A search along those lines returned flights to airports near national parks across the West and into Canada for dates around Thanksgiving.
The tool is currently available to about 50% of users only on American’s website. The company plans to introduce an in-app version in about a month, and should open it up to 100% of website customers in four-to-six weeks, so long as no major bugs are detected as the trial progresses.
“We are trying to step our way into this and see the kinds of prompts people are asking for,” Singh said. “We need data to be our guide every step of the way.”
Google Flights recently rolled out a similar tool that allows for natural language flight search, and both the American and Google results prioritize flights in terms of price.
Samuel Liyanage, American’s Vice President of Digital Customer Experience said that the airline was trying to respond to the way more people are thinking about their vacations, and be proactive about meeting its customers where they are when it comes to booking flights.
The tool can also help travelers stick to their pricing plans. Searches like “I want to take a beach vacation in February and spend less than $500 on flights” will still return results with flights for more than $500, but they’ll be marked with a tag that says “over budget.”
Singh added that he has seen how the tool can help people discover new destinations they might not have considered otherwise.
“I’ve suffered from this as a traveler as well, I’ve been focused on ‘I want to go to Cancún,’ but this is opening my eyes to what other experiences exist out there.”
AAdvantage members can use the tool to search for reward flights as well, but for now mileage redemption results include only American Airlines flights. Results for flights with a cash fare will include partner airlines as well under the tool.
A search using the language “I want to take a ski vacation before Christmas or after New Year’s,” for example, returned flight options to Denver for Vail and Aspen, Salt Lake City for Park City, Geneva for Chamonix and Zurich for Zermatt – a good reminder that the Alps can be just as accessible and affordable for an American winter sports fan as the Rockies or Adirondacks.
“People are trying not just a classic (origin and destination) search, but on the experiences associated with their travel,” Singh said.
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.
