Research Overview

The airline digitalization market is a growth market forecast to achieve more than $35 billion in revenue by 2030. It is a highly fragmented market, with the top 15 companies accounting for nearly 26.5% of the market share. This share amount is not expected to change significantly over the forecast period (2021–2030). The market’s top companies by estimated revenue include Amadeus, Sabre, SITA, IBM, Boeing, Airbus, and PROS. The market is estimated to have more than 100 companies and will continue to grow as new start-ups increasingly enter the market with niche solutions based on next-generation technologies targeting specific airline needs.

Major airlines globally have committed to migrating their entire information technology (IT) infrastructure to a cloud infrastructure within the next decade. Traditional full-service carriers with a significant amount of IT workloads on legacy systems and facing stiff digital competition from low-cost carriers are anticipated to lead this market trend. Migrating workloads to the cloud, increasing touchless passenger experiences, optimizing internal processes, improving customer outreach through personalization, and enhancing ancillary revenues are the key growth drivers of the airline digitalization market.

A notable success factor for airlines is creating a team with dedicated budgets for digital initiatives, but training employees and recruiting digitally skilled employees are major challenges. Real-time data analytics with an interactive display/graphical user interface is also a key focus area and expected to have a higher penetration in the medium term (2024–2025). Additionally, blockchain is gaining traction in aviation research and development investment as airlines investigate its potential usage in distribution, loyalty programs, and supply chain management.