Virgin Atlantic's CFO on why AI investment is a 'no-brainer'

When the CFO of an airline says you “can’t ignore” a technology investment, it’s worth paying attention. Virgin Atlantic’s Oliver Byers isn’t hedging. Speaking with OpenAI, he laid out a clear-eyed case for how the carrier—a self-described challenger brand punching above its weight against larger global competitors—is embedding AI across the enterprise. The math, he says, is straightforward. Early pilots with ChatGPT Enterprise delivered tangible efficiency gains so quickly that scaling up became an obvious business decision.

Software development is where the most dramatic acceleration has occurred. Byers notes that AI-assisted coding means more features are being shipped faster, directly impacting the customer-facing app, check-in process, and loyalty program. That speed is a competitive differentiator in an industry where digital experience increasingly dictates booking choices. But the footprint extends well beyond engineering. HR teams now use custom GPTs trained on internal policies to power self-service. Finance uses the tools to draft performance narratives and analyze data in real time—a meaningful advantage in a heavily regulated sector.

Cultural adoption, not just technological deployment, is the real engine here. Byers and CEO Shai Weiss have championed AI as an empowerment tool, building a framework around education, a network of internal champions, clear guardrails, and constant iteration. The airline has hundreds of custom GPTs already built by its own people, with new ones appearing weekly. A partnership with Cambridge Spark is bringing in AI apprentices to further scale these grassroots efforts.

The flashiest manifestation of this strategy is a digital concierge designed to be a single hub for everything from trip inspiration to booking management. The real trick wasn’t the functionality—it was preserving Virgin Atlantic’s signature tone. The brand is built on human warmth and wit, and Byers says the concierge was deliberately engineered to sound like “us,” with a strict protocol to hand off complex or sensitive issues to a human agent. The vision isn’t measured in months, but in a multi-year horizon where AI becomes invisible infrastructure for a distinctly Virgin experience.