IAR launches breakfast briefing on agentic AI at PTE 2026
Posted: 19 January 2026 | International Airport Review | 1 comment
International Airport Review’s breakfast briefing will explore how agentic AI can transform airport operations, resilience and passenger experience, offering leaders a roadmap for adoption.
International Airport Review (IAR) has announced the launch of its annual breakfast briefing at Passenger Terminal Expo (PTE) 2026, focusing on one of the most disruptive trends in aviation technology: agentic AI.
Taking place on 18 March, the session titled “The agentic AI revolution: Architecting the future of operations, resilience, and passenger experience” will examine how airports can move beyond traditional AI applications towards systems that act autonomously, coordinating workflows, triggering actions across integrated platforms, and escalating only exceptions to human teams.
The briefing promises practical insights for senior airport leaders, including the minimum architecture required for deployment, observability and human-in-the-loop controls, risk and safety cases, and how to run a 90-day pilot tied to high-value use cases such as disruption recovery, turnaround co-ordination, baggage exceptions and passenger flow optimisation.
Agentic AI is expected to deliver significant benefits across four pillars: operational efficiency, passenger experience, resilience and sustainability. By reducing manual intervention and enabling predictive, autonomous decision-making, airports can improve reliability, cut costs and enhance service quality while meeting stringent environmental and regulatory targets.
Attendees will leave with a structured adoption roadmap, governance guardrails, ethical frameworks for accountability and a checklist to assess vendor claims. The panel will feature Vanesa Calvo, Head of Funding & Innovation Trends Department at Aena, along with leading airport CIOs, technology analysts and SITA representatives, moderated by IAR’s Editor, ensuring a balanced discussion of both opportunities and challenges.
With global passenger numbers set to double by 2050 and operational complexity rising, this session offers airport executives a timely opportunity to understand how agentic AI can underpin future-ready operations.
Related topics
Artificial intelligence (AI), Innovation, New technologies, Operational efficiency, Passenger experience and seamless travel
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This is a timely and much-needed discussion for the aviation industry. Agentic AI has real potential to move airports from reactive operations to resilient, self-coordinating systems—if it’s deployed with the right architecture, governance, and human-in-the-loop controls. It’s encouraging to see IAR focusing on practical adoption frameworks rather than hype. From our experience at SDH, the biggest value comes when agentic systems are grounded in clear operational workflows and accountability models. This kind of dialogue is exactly what airport leaders need as complexity and passenger expectations continue to rise.