Which airlines does AI cite most?

Bottom line

Delta leads airlines on AI search visibility with MVI 65, sitting firmly in the repeat-use tier, in a tight race with Southwest Airlines (MVI 62).

• Who AI cites most

  Delta is cited in 62 of 100 prompt-engine pairs (62%). 95% confidence interval 55-73.

• Concentration

  The top 3 brands (Delta, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines) capture 48% of all citations in this segment. 10 of 20 tracked brands are cited in fewer than 1 in 10 prompt-engine pairs.

• Where the field sits

  Of 20 brands tested: 2 in repeat-use, 5 in first-encounter, 13 not yet cited. Overall, AI cites a brand from this segment in 16% of buyer-intent prompt-engine pairs.

• Engine asymmetry

  Southwest Airlines is cited in 95% of Claude prompts but only 0% on Perplexity, visibility is engine-specific, not universal.

• Phase flip

  Southwest Airlines actually outperforms Delta on Filtered Discovery prompts, overall MVI hides this category-specific strength.

• Notable absence

  Hawaiian Airlines is not yet cited, 0 prompts across all 100 prompt-engine pairs. A recognizable brand AI is not yet surfacing.

Analyst note

Delta leads with an MVI of 65, but no brand reaches the leader tier.

Delta and Southwest Airlines are the only brands in the foothold tier, with MVIs of 65 and 62 respectively. Delta excels on Gemini with a 90 score, while Southwest peaks on Claude at 95. American Airlines trails with an MVI of 44, struggling in the filtered phase at 25. The rest of the field is mostly invisible, with 13 brands not yet cited.

Risk:Delta's absence on Perplexity, where it scores 0, poses a risk if competitors gain traction there.

Headline finding

Delta leads airlines on AI search visibility with MVI 65, sitting firmly in the repeat-use tier.

Citation rate per engine

How often each engine cites a brand from this category as a recommendation, averaged across all 20 brands tested.

Phase strength across the category

Which buyer-intent phases are easiest vs hardest to win in airlines. Citation rate averaged across all brands tested. Phase weights are part of the MVI formula.

Who wins which buyer phase

Top 12brands by MVI mapped against the four buyer-intent phases. Each cell shows the brand's citation rate for that phase, color-coded so the visual pattern tells the story: a brand strong across all four phases reads as a horizontal orange band; a brand strong only at Discovery but weak at Evaluation reads as a left-heavy gradient. This is the segment's findings against the panel.

How to read it. Strong horizontal band = durable brand, AI cites it across the entire funnel. Left-heavy gradient = brand with awareness (Discovery) but weak recommendation (Evaluation), the demand-leak pattern from Finding 03. Right-heavy gradient = brand AI considers in Comparison and Evaluation but does not surface in initial Discovery, the anti-leak pattern. Color steps: dark orange ≥75%, orange ≥50%, peach ≥30%, light ≥10%, beige >0%, neutral 0%.

For CMOs in airlines

What this report means for your airlines portfolio

Each bullet is a category-specific decision derived from this month's data, with the mapou service that operationalizes it.

The mapou Visibility Index

Ranked by MVI score (Wilson 95% CI shown). The Spread column shows the gap between each brand's best and worst engine, under 15pp is durable, 50pp+ is engine-dependent. Per-engine columns show the count of prompts where each engine cited the brand as a recommendation (out of 20). Read each column as a signal: when ChatGPT cites you but Gemini doesn't, your gap is engine-specific. When all five miss you, the gap is foundational.

Strategic insights for airlines

Five derived metrics computed from the same data, surfacing how this segment behaves on AI search. See the State of AI Search for cross-segment comparison.

Brands cited most across the category

Aggregated across every (brand × prompt × engine) combination tested. The most-cited brands here are the names AI consistently surfaces when buyers ask about airlines.

Emerging brands AI is citing in airlines

Brand names AI engines surfaced for airlines prompts that are not currently on the mapou tracked panel. Ranked by mention count and engine breadth. These are panel candidates, brands AI considers part of the category even though we are not yet measuring them.

Method. Aggregated across the canonical run for airlines. For every (panel brand × prompt × engine) we record the brand names the analyzer extracted (capped at 6 per response), then drop names that match the tracked panel or its aliases, plus a denylist of generic category terms. Threshold to qualify: at least 3 mentions across at least 2 of 5 engines. Click any row to see the AI quote that surfaced the brand. Some entries may be tracked elsewhere on mapou but not in this segment, in which case AI considers them cross-category competitors. Reviewed monthly to inform panel additions.

How airlines rankings shift by buyer persona

The MVI score is calibrated to a generic shopping-assistant prompt. But buyers don't arrive generically. We re-ran the same 20 canonical prompts five more times, each with a different buyer-persona signal in the system prompt: budget-conscious, premium, working professional, first-time, values-driven. Top-3 overlap with baseline: 73%. Leader holds across all personas: no. Delta loses the #1 spot to a different brand under at least one persona.

Each cell is the citation rate (out of 20 canonical prompts) for that brand under that persona, ChatGPT only. Cells are tinted green when a brand gains 5+ percentage points vs baseline, orange when it loses 5+. Strong tints flag a 20+ percentage-point swing. Top 8 baseline brands shown; full per-persona data is in data/research/persona-robustness/2026-05-07-1625/. The full methodology is on the State of AI Search page.

The 20-prompt taxonomy

Every brand in this report is tested against the same 20 canonical prompts, spanning the four MVI dimensions (Discovery, Filtered Discovery, Comparison, Evaluation). The prompt set is fixed at methodology v1.0 and reused every monthly run, so MVI deltas are paired comparisons not noise.

Methodology v1.0. MVI is mapou's proprietary 0-100 visibility score across 5 AI engines and 4 buyer-intent dimensions. 95% Wilson confidence intervals. Equal engine weighting. See the framework →