Every carrier now calls itself “premium,” every loyalty program “rewarding,” every journey “seamless.” For most passengers, travel is a blur of apps, queues, fees, and slightly different versions of the same seat. This is what commoditization looks like when it has finished its work.

As a result, price—not preference—drives choice; routes—not relationships—drive purchase. Loyalty programs function like financial instruments that happen to issue boarding passes. Planes, seats, and apps are incrementally better, but the reasons to care are vanishing.

Meanwhile, innovation abounds. Biometrics shave seconds off boarding. AI reroutes disrupted journeys. Wellness content floats through cabins at 35,000 feet. All of it’s clever, but very little is memorable. The uncomfortable truth is this: most airlines are no longer meaningfully differentiated in the minds of the people who fly them. And in a world where experience, not engineering, is the real battleground, that is a dangerous place to be.

This is not a failure of operations. It’s a failure of brand.

As product, price, and service models continue to converge, brand has become one of the few remaining sources of defensible advantage. Not as a logo or a campaign, but as a disciplined, end-to-end idea that determines what an airline chooses to be famous for, and just as importantly, what it chooses to ignore.

The problem is not subtle and can be traced to a small number of structural forces now squeezing the industry from all sides.

For all the talk of experience, price still does most of the work. Around 60% of global travelers say cost is the primary driver of airline choice, and the industry’s enthusiastic unbundling of seats and bags and catering has only intensified the focus on transactions over relationships.

The result is an arms race of features, discounts, and marginal improvements that trains customers to shop, not to care. At the same time, “premium” has become one of the most overused words in aviation. Low-cost carriers add premium cabins. Flag carriers introduce ever more elaborate suites. The middle of the market fills up with a fog of indistinguishable upgrades and ambiguous promises. The market now offers enormous choice and remarkably little clarity.

Loyalty programs have never been bigger. They have also never been less emotionally meaningful. Miles are increasingly earned through credit cards rather than flying. Partnerships have turned programs into sprawling coalitions of points and perks. What was once a relationship to nurture has quietly become a wallet to squeeze.

Many travelers now admit that a single bad disruption is enough to break their allegiance. This is the central paradox of modern airline loyalty: membership numbers keep rising, while emotional commitment keeps falling.

Airlines have built vast, sophisticated loyalty machines, but they have been less successful at building genuine attachment.

Today’s passenger expects a strange but non-negotiable combination: high technology and high humanity, perfectly blended. AI assistants book and rebook. Biometrics speed passengers through checkpoints. Luggage can be tracked like a pizza delivery. And yet warmth, empathy, and cultural authenticity still matter, and are instantly noticed when they are missing.

Southwest, for example, has long understood this, anchoring its service culture in a deliberately human, brand-led idea of care and individuality. The result is not just efficiency, but a feeling that the experience has a personality.

The problem is that the modern journey no longer belongs to any single airline. Planning, booking, upgrades, lounges, alliances, apps, and partners now form a fragmented experience ecosystem that no airline fully controls. And in that fragmentation, brand coherence is usually the first casualty.

Against this backdrop, airlines do not just need better services. They need a brand that can hold the whole experience together. As product, price, and experience tactics continue to blur into one another, brand has become one of the industry’s most underused strategic assets. It can signal trust, justify premiums, and, when taken seriously, make an airline genuinely easier to choose.

If airlines are serious about escaping this trap, they will have to see the challenges they’re facing differently and look to brand as a lever for solving them. 

It starts with five fundamental shifts.

In a commoditized market, differentiation does not come from adding more features. It comes from choosing a clearer, sharper emotional position and committing to it. Korean Air’s recent transformation is a case in point. Its ambition was not incremental improvement, but reappraisal. It was a fundamental repositioning of what the brand stands for in Korea and on the global stage. The result was not just a new identity, but a hospitality-driven experience that confidently signals modern Korean premium to the world.

The real question is not what you offer, it is what you want to be known for. What is your airline’s emotional core? And what are you willing to stop doing to protect it?

In a world of engineered experiences, authenticity has become one of the few things that still cuts through.

Hawaiian Airlines understands something most brands only talk about: culture is not a polish you apply, it is a system you build. The spirit of aloha is not a marketing idea, it is operational doctrine. It shapes how people are hired, how they are trained, how service is delivered, how decisions are made, and how the airline shows up, day after day in moments big and small. Commitments like Mālama (Care), Hoʻokipa (Hospitality), and Poʻokela (Excellence) are not framed on walls. They are built into the soul of the organization. And because of that, they surface everywhere: in aircraft names and livery, in local brand collaborations, in inflight details like POG juice and island snacks, and in Hana Hou!, which does not just fill pages, but carries the voice, stories, and spirit of the islands into the cabin. Look closely, and so many details say “Aloha in everything we do.” None of this is accidental, and none of it is superficial.

The real question is not what you say you stand for; it’s what you are willing to hardwire into how your company runs.

With budgets under pressure and customer expectations rising, the answer is not to do more. It is to do a few things undeniably well.

Delta Sync is a good example of this kind of focused ambition. It is not a single feature, but an integrated experience layer that connects pre-flight, inflight, and post-flight moments into a coherent, personalized system. Because it is built on a broad content and partnership ecosystem, from T-Mobile to Paramount+, YouTube, and others, it delivers both utility and engagement without requiring Delta to invent everything itself.

This is what strategic leverage looks like: fewer, better ideas, working harder across the whole journey.

The most ambitious airlines are no longer content to be transportation companies. They want to be part of how their customers live beyond the flight experience.

Cathay’s brand is a strong example of this shift and “moves people forward in life.” It frames the airline not just as a carrier, but as a curator of a premium, culturally rich, wellness-oriented lifestyle. From its Cathay Wellness program which rewards healthy behavior through partnerships with brands like Cigna, Garmin, and Fitbit, to initiatives like Gallery in the Skies, the brand consistently shows up as a cultural and personal enrichment platform, not just a logistics provider.

This is what it means to extend relevance beyond the airport.

If loyalty is to mean anything again, it must reconnect with everyday life.

Singapore Airlines’ lifestyle rewards program Kris+ does this by making earn-and-redeem immediate and routine across some 1,500 partners spanning coffee, dining, entertainment, and shopping. Small, frequent choices now build toward bigger rewards. The genius of this approach is not generosity, it is presence. By embedding itself in daily routines, the brand stays relevant even when customers are not flying. 

How can your loyalty ecosystem turn everyday choices into brand-building moments?

The airline industry is under real pressure: commoditization, premiumization theater, rising customer expectations, and loyalty that breaks at the first serious test. Most will respond by optimizing harder and adding features few passengers will remember.

The winners will do something far more difficult. They will decide what they stand for and build their businesses around that choice.

By sharpening their point of view, operationalizing culture, focusing on a small number of signature experiences, expanding into everyday life, and reinventing loyalty around how people live, airlines can once again become brands that are chosen, not merely endured.

In an industry that sees people at moments of stress, anticipation, and return, the brands that truly soar will be the ones that earn trust, create genuine connection, and build journeys people remember and want to repeat.