Airlines,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about airlines — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, British Airways owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
British Airways is the default answer.
Named in 43% of airlines answers, typically in position 2.0. Virgin Atlantic follows at 25%, Emirates at 20%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | British Airways | 43% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Virgin Atlantic | 25% | 2.7 | 14% | 18% |
| 3 | Emirates | 20% | 3.3 | 4% | 50% |
| 4 | easyJet | 17% | 3.3 | 6% | 25% |
| 5 | Singapore Airlines | 17% | 3.8 | 6% | 17% |
| 6 | Qatar Airways | 15% | 3.1 | 6% | 50% |
| 7 | Ryanair | 13% | 2.4 | 6% | 23% |
| 8 | Lufthansa | 13% | 4.4 | 4% | 40% |
| 9 | United Airlines | 8% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 10 | TUI | 7% | 2.5 | 2% | 0% |
| 11 | American Airlines | 7% | 3.3 | 4% | 13% |
| 12 | Japan Airlines | 5% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | ANA | 5% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Wizz Air | 5% | 4.3 | 4% | 33% |
| 15 | Delta Air Lines | 3% | 2.0 | 0% | 0% |
The referees of airlines.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering airlines questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Emirates converts reads into citations. American Airlines doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Emirates converts 50% of reads; American Airlines just 13%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | British Airways | 43% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Virgin Atlantic | 25% | 2.7 | 14% | 18% |
| 3 | Emirates | 20% | 3.3 | 4% | 50% |
| 4 | easyJet | 17% | 3.3 | 6% | 25% |
| 5 | Singapore Airlines | 17% | 3.8 | 6% | 17% |
| 6 | Qatar Airways | 15% | 3.1 | 6% | 50% |
| 7 | Ryanair | 13% | 2.4 | 6% | 23% |
| 8 | Lufthansa | 13% | 4.4 | 4% | 40% |
| 9 | United Airlines | 8% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 10 | TUI | 7% | 2.5 | 2% | 0% |
| 11 | American Airlines | 7% | 3.3 | 4% | 13% |
| 12 | Japan Airlines | 5% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | ANA | 5% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Wizz Air | 5% | 4.3 | 4% | 33% |
| 15 | Delta Air Lines | 3% | 2.0 | 0% | 0% |
All three models agree: British Airways.
A rare consensus — every model puts British Airways first, and their top-five lists overlap 22%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Airways | 20% | 60% | 50% | 40pp |
| Emirates | 5% | 20% | 35% | 30pp |
| Virgin Atlantic | 10% | 30% | 35% | 25pp |
| Singapore Airlines | 5% | 30% | 15% | 25pp |
| Lufthansa | 0% | 25% | 15% | 25pp |
| Qatar Airways | 0% | 20% | 25% | 25pp |
| easyJet | 15% | 25% | 10% | 15pp |
| United Airlines | 10% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Wizz Air | 10% | 0% | 5% | 10pp |
| Swiss International Air Lines | 0% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
How-to guides carry airlines.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; spec-sheet convert best — 100% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 60 | 2 | 97% |
| Editorial | 52 | 2 | 96% |
| Comparisons | 26 | 2 | 93% |
| Documentation | 25 | 1 | 96% |
| Product pages | 19 | 1 | 95% |
| spec-sheet | 14 | 0 | 100% |
| Community threads | 12 | 0 | 100% |
| Listicles | 10 | 3 | 77% |
Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the airlines pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 11 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 21pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured data | 26 | 100% | 264 | 89% | +11pp |
| Answer up front | 121 | 93% | 169 | 88% | +4pp |
| Named author | 124 | 92% | 166 | 89% | +3pp |
| Specifications | 56 | 89% | 234 | 90% | -1pp |
| Comparison table | 84 | 89% | 206 | 90% | -1pp |
| Updated this year | 86 | 83% | 204 | 93% | -11pp |
| Hard statistics | 56 | 73% | 234 | 94% | -21pp |
Singapore Airlines builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Set against how often those pages are actually cited.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore Airlines | 29 | 100% | 3 |
| Ryanair | 21 | 100% | 3 |
| Qatar Airways | 17 | 100% | 3 |
| Virgin Atlantic | 13 | 78% | 9 |
| British Airways | 13 | 82% | 22 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions airlines pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:31:48 GMT.