Why the future of airlines will be determined not by champagne or seat density, but by control over the journey, digital logic, the family travel scenario, and a new economy of trust.
During ticket booking, flights, or even just watching trip reports on YouTube, I often look at civil aviation not only as transport and romance, but also as an ordinary product. And in that sense, civil aviation has always been a mirror of its passenger. In the days of Junkers, in the days of Concordes, and in the era of composite Airbus A350s. It changed not only because of new aircraft, deregulation, crises, and fuel. It changed because the person buying a ticket for an airplane seat changes, and because their idea of what is worth paying for at all, what I expect and what I get, changes.
My thesis turned out to be completely simple — yes, Gen Z (our zoomers) and then Generation Alpha will noticeably change aviation, but not through a mass return of the “golden age” of service. The main shift will be different, where the airplane will finally turn from a symbol of status into a digital, manageable, modular journey platform. And luxury will not disappear anywhere; it will simply become narrower, more expensive, and more theatrical.
First, I will write about my approach to thinking and analyzing this issue.
So that my thoughts are not just a set of letters for some kind of voice-over text for my second channel, but remain a kind of personal research, I rely on several layers of data: Smithsonian historical materials, data found on FAA and GAO websites about the massification of air travel, of course the IATA Global Passenger Survey 2024–2025 and IATA industry statistics, official materials from my favorite airline Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Emirates; studies by McKinsey, OAG, Hilton, Deloitte, and even Booking.com. I also looked at Russian data from Rosaviatsia, the TASS agency, and read Pobeda’s product model. Another thing is important too: as of March 14, 2026, the oldest representatives of Generation Alpha, if we look at the official information, are already about 15–16 years old, so there is still little direct data on their independent air travel consumption. In short, they still fly with their parents. And this means that with regard to Generation Alpha, we are inevitably working now not only with direct signals, but also with proxies: family trips, children’s influence on travel decisions, and general digital patterns of young airline users.
At first, aviation sold exclusivity. Then it began to sell accessibility.
If you look at aviation in the middle of the 20th century, the main word here is not only “romance,” but exclusivity. Flying was an expensive, rare, and symbolically rich experience. But already in the jet age, what was more important than any nostalgia began: aviation started to become rapidly mass-market at every level, both across the ocean and between neighboring cities. The Smithsonian notes that between 1955 and 1972, the number of passengers more than quadrupled, and the flight itself became a less exclusive event for an ordinary person. Then, for example, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 in the United States created a highly competitive environment, and the GAO later recorded that the average cost per mile for a passenger in 1994 was 8–11% lower than in 1979, depending on the type of airport.
This logic, you could say, from elitism to mass market is also visible in modern statistics. According to IATA, the global volume of segment passengers amounted to 4.774 billion in 2024, and for 2025 it was expected to be 4.982 billion, and for 2026 — 5.202 billion. Separately, IATA reported that the full year 2024 ended with total demand growth of 10.4% compared to 2023, and the average load factor reached a record 83.5%. In other words, the basic story of aviation in recent decades is not “how to bring back former luxury,” but “how to serve giant and still growing mass demand.”
The Russian and Soviet story is no exception here. A historical TASS article says that in the 1950s–1960s, civil aviation in the USSR ceased to be exotic, millions of ordinary people began to use its services, and in 1976 Aeroflot became the first in the world to carry more than 100 million passengers in a year. I remember our constant slogan: Fly Aeroflot. This is a very important correction to the familiar mythology. According to these data, in the USSR too, civil air transportation was not only a sign of prestige and modernity, but also an instrument of mass mobility.
And it is exactly here, in my personal view, that the main conflict of the topic is born. We love to remember and often perceive aviation as ritual, as an event, as an adventure. But historically, aviation won the market not when it remained rare, but when it became the norm. Each next generation inherited a completely different “norm of passenger flight by airplane.”
The “Boomer” generation got aviation as the accessible prestige of its time
For the boomer generation, aviation was no longer the unattainable luxury it had been for their parents, but by inertia it retained an aura of status and luxury. It was not just a way to get from point A to point B, but a social experience with the residual shine of a “big journey or adventure” where there is a large set of service, order, space, formality, predictability.
But it is important to understand: even today, premium is not the volume of the market, but first of all a margin and image layer. According to IATA WATS, in 2024 international premium traffic in business and first class grew by 11.8%, but in absolute terms amounted to 116.9 million passengers, that is, only 6% of all international passengers. Luxury has not disappeared. It simply ceased to be the industry standard and became a so-called halo product over the mass market of ordinary transportation.
That is exactly why Middle Eastern carriers remain so important as a case. Emirates still builds the premium scenario not simply around the seat, but around an entire production: lounge, silence, shower, gastronomy, expensive champagne. On Emirates’ official pages, the so-called bespoke Moët & Chandon lounge in the business lounge of Dubai Airport Terminal 3 is directly described. At the same time, IATA records that Middle Eastern passengers are among the most digitally engaged, and loyalty and service quality are especially important for them. This is a very precise combination — digital maturity plus symbolic premium quality.
Hence my first intermediate conclusion: luxury in aviation has not died, it has concentrated. All this is no longer about “the whole industry,” but about individual brands, individual hubs, individual segments, and a very clearly packaged image. Every day I think that the conflict in the Middle East, which continues in early March 2026, should not affect the products and the existence of Emirates in its current form in any way. It would be like losing Pan American (PAN AM).
Then airlines realized that their “philosophies” are not eternal
The case of Southwest Airlines is very revealing. For many years, Southwest was not just an airline, but almost an ideology, first in Texas and then in many other states. They had bags fly free, no change fees, “Transfarency.” This is not my approximate retelling — this is exactly how the company described its difference in official materials and investor documents for more than 50 years of its existence. In its reporting, Southwest always emphasized that free first and second checked bags and the absence of change fees were key market differentiators. And I am not even talking about the special culture and focus on its employees, which allow it to create a unique experience for every flight even now.
But the current economy and the market have done their job. On Southwest’s official pages, for Basic, Choice, and Choice Preferred fares there are now paid checked bags at $35 for the first and $45 for the second piece (bag or suitcase). In addition, the company switched to assigned seating, and seat sales started on July 29, 2025, while flights with this model began for flights from January 27, 2026. Even flight credits for tickets created after May 28, 2025, stopped being unlimited.
Why is this example so important? Because it shows that even the strongest philosophies in aviation are not sacred. When the demand base changes, brand values change too. The old full-service promise sounded like this: “we thought of everything for you.” The new promise often sounds different: “choose only what really matters to you.”
And Asia is especially important here. According to OAG, in 2024, 16 of the world’s 25 largest low-cost megahubs were in the Asian region, and they accounted for 61% of all seats. Deloitte separately emphasizes that the growth of aviation in Southeast Asia has historically been fueled by a growing middle class, liberalization, and the geography of the region, where the land alternative is often inconvenient. In other words, in Asia the airplane really has, in many ways, become not a “flying salon,” but the basic infrastructure of everyday mobility.
Millennials normalized digital comfort in airline travel
If for boomers aviation still preserved the aura of accessible prestige, then millennials accelerated a completely different norm — digital comfort matters more than formal gloss. In this sense, I would cite JetBlue as one of the most interesting cases of recent decades. In its own materials, JetBlue describes itself as the first carrier to give passengers monitors with movies, connectivity, and free Wi‑Fi on every aircraft. In 2024, the company continued to develop this logic through Blueprint by JetBlue — a personalized inflight platform with watch party, saved preferences, and a more “home-like” digital flight scenario.
It seems important to me that in this case JetBlue is not selling old luxury. It is selling something else. I would describe it as the feeling that the cabin does not throw you out of your digital life. This is no longer a story about caviar and silver and expensive champagne. This is a story about the flight not having to break your day, your content, your work, your sense of control.
And it is exactly from here that the bridge stretches to Gen Z, where I began.
Gen Z. Price matters to them, but it matters even more for them to control everything
Gen Z is often spoken about in a simplified way, as if they only need a low price. That is only half true. McKinsey shows that 37% of Gen Z passengers are willing to choose a cheaper flight even if it is inconvenient in timing or requires a connection, versus 22% among boomers. But the same study shows something else too: 52% of Gen Z say they are willing to spend on experiences, compared to 29% among boomers. And moreover, Gen Z are more likely to save on flights, local transport, shopping, and food than to cut the experiences themselves.
So what we have before us is not a “cheap generation,” but a generation of a kind of selective value. Zoomers save where they do not see emotional meaning in overpaying, but are willing to pay where they feel experience, control, identity, or time.
IATA gives this picture a technological dimension. In the Global Passenger Survey 2024 it is written that younger travelers in 2025 turned out to be the most proactive users of digital tools. Among passengers under 25, 51% chose digital wallets, 90% wanted to use a smartphone that combines wallet, passport, and loyalty, and in 2025 IATA already recorded that the overall shift toward a mobile-led journey is intensifying: 54% want to interact directly with the airline, 78% want to use the smartphone as a single travel tool, and younger travelers are pulling the growth of web apps and digital ID more strongly than others. At the same time, IATA separately emphasizes: passengers under 26 are the most technologically ready, but at the same time the hardest to satisfy, and also the most sensitive to privacy and cybersecurity.
OAG complements this very well. Their study shows that only 65% of Gen Z are enrolled in frequent-flyer loyalty programs versus 89% of boomers. It reads as though young people want to use miles not only on flights, but on the whole trip — for example, 50% of Gen Z would like to spend points on vacation rentals too. At the same time, Gen Z and millennials were 27% more likely to pay up to $100 extra for a full-service airline ticket compared with low/ultra low-cost, if the difference in service would be tangible and the flight would be long. In other words, the classic loyalty model of “fly more — get some kind of upgrade” is no longer enough for young people. They need utility beyond the aircraft.
The fight for this passenger begins even before booking. At the end of 2025, Deloitte wrote that more than half of Gen Z use short-form video as a source of inspiration for a trip, and the use of AI for trip planning grew 1.5 times compared with 2024, especially among millennials. And Booking.com, now gone from us, recorded that 34% of travelers are generally ready to choose a destination in part because of the airport, and among the young there is growing interest in luxury services at airports, for example quick-sleep capsules, spa areas, and Michelin-starred restaurants. By the way, there are now many of these services in Chinese and Asian airports. In other words, the average young passenger buys not only a flight and not only a destination. They buy the whole travel scenario, starting from a reel watched on a smartphone and ending with transfer time in a hub.
Therefore, the new premium for Gen Z is not so much champagne as predictability, understandable pricing, direct contact with the airline, a powerful app, stable Wi‑Fi, fast rebooking, honest promises, and the feeling that you are managing the trip rather than fighting it. And McKinsey is probably very precise here that beyond price itself, passengers highly value booking simplicity and trust in brands.
Generation Alpha is already changing civil aviation, although it is not yet buying tickets in mass numbers
An honest correction is needed here on my part. As of March 14, 2026, Generation Alpha passengers, if we take the common frame of 2010–2024/2025, are still not full-fledged mass independent buyers of airline tickets. And in general, not buyers of anything more expensive than a pocket-money budget. In the next 1–2 years, it will primarily be younger Gen Z, not Alpha, who will independently bring money into the industry. Therefore, it is probably premature to say that “in a year or two Alpha will start changing aviation as an independent paying passenger.” It is more accurate to say it differently: Gen Z spends independently, while Alphas are already shaping expectations through their parents.
And it is exactly here, in my super simple view, that the most underestimated turn lies. I will start with a small digression toward the Hilton network: in its 2025 trend report, Hilton wrote that Generation Alpha are hyper-connected children who influence the decisions of their millennial and Gen Z parents. 70% of parents with children choose a destination based on the child’s interests, 63% often let children choose where to eat during the trip, 56% are guided by kids’ clubs and classes in programming or robotics, and among the main family requests are, of course, access to technology and technical development for children. That is why Hilton has already started to change.
For civil aviation, this means a very unpleasant, but very important truth: the family passenger is no longer ready to consider seat selection on the plane, clear baggage rules, easy transfer with children, charging outlets, normal Wi‑Fi, and quiet waiting at the airport as “additional options.” This is starting to be perceived as the baseline. It is no coincidence that even in the United States, the issue of family seating zones has already moved into the sphere of regulation. In 2024, the DOT directly called family seating “common service” and proposed obliging carriers to provide such seating without a separate fee where seats are available.
From this I make an important forecast. The first major influence of Generation Alpha on aviation will not be about luxury, but about the family experience. Not “children will want first class,” but “children and their parents will demand that the trip not fall apart into small stress every 15 minutes.” And then, when Alphas begin spending independently in the 2030s, this logic will simply become a personal norm — seamlessness, technology, contextuality, the system’s memory of you. You sit down in your 9F and everything around you is already the same as it was on the last flight.
There is one more subtle thing here, I would call it the symbolism of premium, and it will shift too. Booking.com shows growing interest among young people in sleep cabins and spa formats at airports, while Hilton writes that 1 in 4 travelers reduced or stopped alcohol consumption over the past year. For aviation, this means that the premium of the 2030s will probably be less tied to conspicuous consumption and more to sleep, silence, wellness, privacy, quality of time, and gastronomic choice.
What exactly will change in airlines by 2035 in connection with these generation-related data
The first thing is of course that journey management will become more important than transportation itself. I wrote about this in my other article about passenger experience.
From IATA surveys it is clear that the passenger increasingly wants to manage their path through the smartphone. From booking to baggage and identification. Consequently, the best product will not simply be good service and comfort in the cabin, but the airline that solves irregular situations best of all: schedule changes, delays, missed connections, refunds, baggage, and self-service. The new luxury is control.
The second thing is fares. They will become even more modular, but transparency will become a separate competitive advantage.
Already today, even low-cost logic does not boil down to “just a bare seat.” On Pobeda’s services page, we see not only seat selection and baggage, but also meals, insurance, eSIM, hotels, apartments, cars, transfers, and business lounges. In other words, the airline is selling less and less “a flight” and more and more a travel package. But at the same time, pressure for transparency will grow, and the Southwest story shows how painfully the market reacts when a brand changes its basic promises too abruptly.
The third thing will be the removal of limits only from loyalty to airlines
The classic logic of frequent-flyer loyalty programs is becoming outdated if miles cannot be used at any time where the passenger actually spends money, and that is hotels, places to stay (apartments, flats, and so on), ground transport, additional services. That is exactly why OAG sees a clear request from young people for cross-product utility of points. The winner will not be the loyalty program that draws statuses better, but the one that integrates more deeply into the economy of the whole trip.
Fourth. I believe the airport will become part of the airline brand, and not just invisible infrastructure.
Booking.com is already recording “airport as destination,” and Middle Eastern hubs show how lounges, spas, cafés and restaurants, and transfer quality become part of the brand and value. Moreover, OAG showed that major hubs in the Middle East and Turkey already collect 43% of flows between the Asian region and Europe, that is, luxury works not separately from the network, but together with it. Luxury there strengthens the power of the hub, and the hub in turn strengthens luxury.
Fifth. Sustainable development will remain a value, but it will win only when it becomes the convenient default option.
Booking.com writes that in 2025, 84% of travelers considered more conscious travel (the green agenda) important, and 93% wanted to make more sustainable choices. But McKinsey directly noted that in real decisions travelers still often put price and connections above conscious travel. EY adds that Gen Z are more sensitive to environmental issues than older generations. This means airlines cannot just talk about ecology — they need to make it simple, inexpensive, and embedded into the core product.
What will not change
I believe that the main variable is price, and it is not going anywhere. Even in 2024, IATA noted that in the Asia-Pacific region passengers are most sensitive to price when choosing a departure airport, and McKinsey in its 2025 review of the aviation industry separately emphasized that besides price, other factors are also important, such as more convenient booking and trust in the brand, but price itself still remains the key driver of mass passenger choice. Therefore, the idea that younger generations will suddenly “return the market to a luxurious and expensive model of full-service air travel for everyone” seems to me rather weak and utopian, to be honest.
There will also be no mass return to old spaciousness in the cabin. The industry now has too high a load and too strict constraints from aircraft manufacturers. The new Boeing 777X still has not been able to take off for how many years now, and IATA recorded a record seat load factor of 83.5% in 2024, while McKinsey writes about a noticeable global aircraft shortage and delivery delays measured at about 2,000 aircraft. In such an environment, mass “de-densification” of cabins is economically unlikely. Therefore, what we should expect is not a general increase in space, but smarter segmentation of space.
And finally, premium will not disappear. But it will not become the norm for the whole industry. It will remain a separate layer with high margins and strong brand effects — which, in fact, is indicated by the fact that international premium passenger traffic is growing, but still amounts to only 6% of international passengers. Fingers crossed that nothing happens to Emirates as the lawmaker of this format.
The Russian scenario, in my view, is not a return to the old shine of Aeroflot’s large business-class cabins, but accelerated digital segmentation
If we look at Russia separately, the logic here will be its own, but the vector is very similar. According to Rosaviatsia, in 2024 Russian airlines carried 111.7 million passengers, including 84.7 million on domestic routes and 27 million on international ones. Preliminary data for 2025 already spoke of almost 109 million passengers, with international traffic growing to 27.4 million. This means that the market remains large, but at the same time is structurally very strongly tied to the country’s internal connectivity. And of course the current sanctions restrictions and the availability of tools, so to speak, until the moment of mass production of domestic aircraft.
Therefore, in Russia, changes under Generations Z and Alpha, in my view, will show up first of all not in a “return of luxury and deluxe,” but in four things: tariff transparency, the quality of mobile journey management before and after, the juggling of additional services, and a clearer family flight scenario. It is telling that even Pobeda — a carrier with harsh price logic — has long been selling not only a ticket, but a whole digital ecosystem, though it still does not hold it in the context of the view from the passenger’s side.
That is exactly why I would describe the future Russian market as a mass segment, even more digital, even more modular, and even more sensitive to price. Meanwhile, the premium segment will remain targeted, visible, branded, but not defining the whole industry and rather limited. And here the Russian story unexpectedly rhymes with the global one, where civil aviation is once again dividing into everyday infrastructure and a separate front row in the theater.
The conclusions I drew:
- Gen Z and Generation Alpha really will change aviation, but not toward a mass return of the “golden age of luxury in flights.”
The history of the industry, current load factors, and the economics of the market speak rather of a further strengthening of the mass, modular, and digital model.
- The main request of the new passenger is not luxury as ritual, but control as service.
Direct contact with the airline, the smartphone as the center of the trip, quick booking changes, honest options, and predictability are becoming more important than performative gloss.
- Premium is not going anywhere, but it will become even more concentrated and symbolic.
It will live in headline brands such as Emirates or Singapore Airlines, strong hubs, and well-thought-out ground experience, and not as the mass standard of the industry.
- In the coming years, the real driver of spending will be Generation Z, while the real driver of expectations will be Generation Alpha.
As of March 2026, Generation Alpha are still too young for mass independent ticket purchases, but they are already changing family travel decisions and normalizing a new standard of convenience.
- For Russia, this means not the restoration of old shine, but accelerated digital segmentation of the aviation product.
And my final conclusion sounds like this:
For Gen Z, the airplane and civil aviation are no longer a stage. They are an interface.
For Generation Alpha, the airplane will become part of the family digital ecosystem in the coming years.
And luxury in the aviation of the future will not disappear — it will simply become rarer, more precise, and more meaningful.
Author: Oleg Remizov
Publication date: March 15, 2026
Below are links to the materials and reports that I used in my article. You may find it interesting to look through them yourselves.
Main sources I used
Smithsonian The Evolution of the Commercial Flying Experience
https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/evolution-commercial-flying-experience
IATA — Passengers Want Convenience and Technology to Simplify Travel
https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2024-releases/2024-10-30-01
IATA’s 2025 Global Passenger Survey Reveals Mobile and Digital Identity Are Shaping Travel
https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2025-releases/2025-11-05-02
McKinsey The Way We Travel Now
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel/our-insights/the-way-we-travel-now
McKinsey The State of Aviation: 2025 Industry Outlook
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel/our-insights/the-state-of-aviation
OAG Winning Traveler Loyalty with Rewards & Ancillary Services
https://www.oag.com/traveler-survey-2024
Hilton Gen Alpha: Next Generation of Travelers
https://stories.hilton.com/2025trends/next-generation-of-travelers
Booking.com — Travel Reinvented: Booking.com’s 2025 Travel Predictions
https://www.booking.com/articles/travelpredictions2025.en-gb.html
Southwest Assigned Seating
https://www.southwest.com/customer-enhancements/assigned-seating
Rosaviatsia. Passenger traffic of Russian airlines in 2024 grew to 111.7 million people
https://www.favt.gov.ru/novosti-rossii/?id=14454
Rosaviatsia. Russian airlines carried almost 109 million passengers in 2025
https://favt.gov.ru/novosti-novosti/?id=17763
