Will the assistant make things up?

It’s built not to. It answers only from your website, your documents, your live data and the Quick Answers your team writes, and it can only share links it actually found on your site. When it doesn’t know, it says so and points the traveler to the right page or contact. Insights lists every question it couldn’t answer, so the gaps get fixed instead of guessed at.

What happens if a traveler reports an emergency in the chat?

The assistant tells them to find the nearest staff member or call 911 right away. A website chat is never the right channel for an unattended bag or a medical emergency, and the assistant says so plainly. The report is still flagged for your team, and high-severity operational issues are emailed to the department you choose.

What is answer engine optimization?

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is making your website the source AI tools use when they answer questions about your airport. Google’s AI summaries, ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot all build answers from web pages. We write clear answers to real traveler questions, add structured data, keep key facts consistent and make sure AI crawlers can reach your site, so the answer travelers read is yours.

Can we add the assistant to our current website?

Yes, if your site runs on WordPress. The assistant connects through our plugin, which gives it your site’s search, documents and live data and adds the Insights and Quick Answers screens to your admin. On other platforms, those connections would have to be built first, so we’d scope that with your team during discovery.

How do you protect traveler privacy?

The assistant doesn’t ask for personal information, and when a question needs it, like a lost item report, it links your own form. Contact details and card-like numbers are masked before anything is stored, conversation logs are deleted on a schedule your airport sets, and no visitor is identified by name. Each airport’s assistant and data are kept separate.

Airport AI Chat and Search | Aviatrix Communications

An assistant that knows your airport

Running today at Mesa Gateway Airport, Palm Springs International Airport and John Glenn Columbus International Airport.

Ask it whether the economy lot is full, how long the security line is, or if there’s a nonstop to Denver, and it checks the same live feeds your website runs on. Ask where to find the noise complaint form and it links the right page. It answers in the traveler’s own language, and it can put together a one-card plan for the trip: when to leave, where to park and what to expect at security.

The Columbus airport assistant on a phone. A traveler asks “Is the garage full right now?” and gets a Parking Availability card showing every lot with plenty of spaces, plus a one-line answer. — On flycolumbus.com, the assistant answers a parking question from the live parking feed.

The Columbus assistant answering “When should I leave home?” with a trip plan card: Southwest 1247 to Denver is on time, plan to arrive by 5:00 a.m., garage parking has plenty of spaces, then check-in and security steps. — A one-card trip plan on flycolumbus.com: the flight’s live status, when to arrive, where to park and what to expect at security.

What it won’t do

Make things up. No invented flight times, parking rates or links. If it can’t find the answer, it says so and points the traveler to the right page or person.
Collect personal information. No names, emails, bag details or payment info. When a question needs those, like a lost item report, it links your own form.
Speak for the airport. It won’t make promises on your behalf or book anything. Tickets go through the airline’s own site.

See what travelers are asking

Every conversation feeds a private Insights screen in your website’s admin. It shows what people asked about this month compared with last, which questions the assistant couldn’t fully answer, and how much of it really belonged to an airline, TSA or a tenant. That last number comes in handy when the airline’s lost-bag questions land on your desk.

Mesa Gateway’s Chatbot Insights screen for the last 30 days, shown with sample data. Six counts across the top: 486 exchanges, 309 conversations, 29% not the airport’s to fix, 11% not answered, 6 need attention, 4.6 second average response. A Needs attention list routes each traveler report with a severity: water dripping from the ceiling by gate 3 and an overflowing restroom sink by baggage claim (Facilities, high), a Daily Lot pay machine that won’t take cards (Parking, medium), a canceled flight to Provo (Airline, Allegiant, medium), a broken water fountain past security (Facilities, low) and a phone found at gate 6 (Customer service, low). At the bottom, 62% of questions were the airport’s and 29% somebody else’s, and security questions are up 31% from the previous 30 days. — Mesa Gateway’s Insights screen, last 30 days. Shown with sample data.

Questions the assistant couldn’t answer turn into page suggestions, written in travelers’ own words, so you know exactly what’s missing from your site. Insights also estimates the staff time saved by questions answered without a phone call or email, and a short digest lands in your inbox every Monday.

Mesa Gateway’s Content gaps list, shown with sample data: car seats and strollers at security, asked 18 times in words like “does a stroller count as a carry on,” and pet relief areas, each with buttons to add a Quick Answer or a new page; bringing golf clubs and items left on the plane are marked as the airline’s to answer. Below, What it handled: 268 conversations answered without a person and an estimated 22.3 hours of staff time saved. — Content gaps and time saved at Mesa Gateway. Shown with sample data.

Change an answer in two minutes

Plans change faster than web pages. Quick Answers let your team give the assistant a short, dated answer that it checks before anything else: the north entrance is closed through Friday, the cell phone lot moved, holiday parking rates start Wednesday. Set when it starts and when it ends, and it takes care of itself. No developer, no new page.

Two steps at Columbus. First, the Add a Quick Answer screen on flycolumbus.com: the title Garage Level 2 entrance closed through Friday, the answer telling travelers to use the Level 1 entrance, phrases such as “is the garage open,” a link to parking options and rates, and dates from October 22 to October 24. Second, the CMH Assistant on a phone: a traveler parking Thursday morning asks if the garage is open and gets that answer with a parking link, then hears the garage has plenty of spaces. — A Quick Answer at Columbus, and the traveler’s answer a minute later. Shown with sample data.

Operational alerts for the right team

Travelers tell a chat window things they’d never call about. The restroom by gate B4 is out of order. The pay station in Lot C won’t take cards. Someone found a phone at the food court. The assistant sorts every report by topic and department, and high-severity operational issues are emailed to the team that owns them, whether that’s facilities, operations, parking or customer service. Everything else waits for you on the Insights screen.

For anything urgent, like an unattended bag or a medical emergency, the assistant tells the traveler to find the nearest staff member or call 911 right away, and the report is flagged for your team too.

The facilities team’s inbox, open to an email from Mesa Gateway Airport titled “Mesa Gateway Airport chatbot: 2 reports worth a look — Facilities.” It quotes two traveler reports from October 20 that a restroom sink by baggage claim is overflowing, with a button to open Chatbot Insights and a note that reports are anonymous. The weekly chatbot digest sits further down the inbox. — The email Mesa Gateway’s facilities team gets when travelers report a problem. Shown with sample data.

Search that speaks airport

People search the way they talk. Our airport search knows that TSA means security and Uber means rideshare. Search for a flight, the security wait or a parking lot, and the live answer shows above the links. Documents are searchable too, and if your airport runs more than one website, the search covers all of them. A search report shows you what people looked for and didn’t find.

Site search on flycolumbus.com for the misspelled word “parkng.” It shows results for “parking” instead, then a live card, CMH parking right now, listing the garage, green lot, red lot and valet parking as open, with a link to parking options and rates, above the results filtered by Passengers, Business, General aviation, News and Documents. — Search on flycolumbus.com fixes a typo and puts today’s parking status above the links.

Be the answer in AI search

More travelers skip the search results now. They read the AI summary at the top of Google, or they ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot directly. Those tools build their answers from websites. If yours is thin, out of date or hard for them to read, they’ll fill the gap with a travel blog from 2019.

That’s what answer engine optimization (AEO) is for: making your airport’s own website the source AI tools trust and quote. Here’s what we do:

Answer the questions travelers really ask. We use your chat Insights and search reports, not guesswork, to write direct answers on the right pages.
Add FAQs and structured data so search engines and AI tools can tell a parking rate from a press release.
Keep the facts consistent. Airlines, nonstop destinations, parking rates, hours and contacts say the same thing on every page.
Let AI tools in. Some website vendors block AI crawlers by default. We make sure the ones that answer travelers’ questions can read your site.
Keep pages fast and accessible. Clear headings and real text help screen readers and AI tools read a page the same way.
Check what AI tools say about you, and fix what they get wrong at the source.

It matters for more than customer service. When someone in your region asks an AI tool whether to fly from your airport or drive two hours to a bigger one, your nonstops, parking rates and security waits need to be part of that answer.

What it looks like day to day

5:10 a.m., parking

A traveler on the way in asks if the garage is full. The assistant checks the live parking feed, says it’s nearly full, and points them to the economy lot with today’s rate.

A week-long detour

Road work closes the north entrance through Friday. Your PR manager adds a Quick Answer that ends Friday night. Every question about getting to the terminal mentions the detour first, and on Saturday the answers go back to normal on their own.

The page nobody knew was missing

The Monday digest shows travelers keep asking where to wait for arriving passengers, and the assistant can only half-answer. Insights suggests a page title in their words. You publish a short cell phone lot page, and the next month those questions get full answers. It’s the same page Google and ChatGPT find when someone asks them.

A broken pay station

Three travelers tell the assistant the Lot C pay station won’t take cards. Each gets pointed to the other ways to pay. Your parking team gets an email flagging it, before anyone posts about it.

In Spanish

A traveler asks, in Spanish, when her daughter’s flight from Denver lands. The assistant answers in Spanish with the live arrival time and links to arrivals and short-term parking.

A weather closure

Your team posts a weather alert on the website. The assistant reads the same alert, so “is the airport open?” gets today’s answer.

For your IT team

The details your IT and security reviewers will ask about, in one place.

Technical details: data sources, privacy, hosting and security

Where answers come from. Your Quick Answers first, then your website’s pages and documents, your airline and route records, and your live data: flights, security waits, parking and alerts. The assistant can only share links one of those sources returned. We set which sources each airport’s assistant can use.
The outside web. Web search is limited to things your site doesn’t cover, like hotels, restaurants and local events. It’s never used for flights, parking, security, terminal shops and dining, airport policies, hours or contacts, and travelers are told when an answer came from the web.
Privacy. The assistant doesn’t ask for personal information. Email addresses, phone numbers and card-like numbers are masked before anything is saved, visitors are stored only as an anonymous key, and conversation logs are deleted on a schedule your airport sets (30 days unless you choose longer). Daily counts by topic are kept long after the conversations themselves are deleted.
Separation. Each airport has its own assistant and its own AI account. One airport’s content never answers another airport’s travelers.
Hosting and security. The assistant service runs in Microsoft Azure, with keys held in Azure Key Vault. Your website gives each visitor a short-lived signed token, so the assistant only answers on your site, and each conversation can be opened only by the visitor who started it.
AI provider. Built on OpenAI’s models through their API, which doesn’t use your data to train models.
Search. Runs on WP Engine Smart Search, which matches meaning as well as keywords. If the search service is ever unavailable, your site falls back to standard WordPress search. Search reports store no IP addresses or user IDs.
Accessibility. The chat window is tested for accessibility like the rest of your site, including keyboard and screen reader use, and answers are written so they make sense to a screen reader without the visual cards.

See it answer real airport questions

We’ll walk you through the assistant and Insights on a live airport site and talk through what your travelers ask most.

Schedule a demo

Airport AI Chat and Search