Malaysia Airlines pilots chatbot developed with Amadeus

Malaysia Airlines is the latest carrier to add a chatbot as a sales channel.

The company, in partnership with Amadeus, has unveiled MHchat to help travelers book and pay for flights via Facebook Messenger.

Malaysia is acting as the pilot customer for the Amadeus Chatbot for Airlines, and the service can also be used for looking up flights, offers, retrieving an itinerary and asking booking-related queries.

Amadeus says it delivered the platform in three months with new features such as multi-language support, the ability to add ancillary services and integration with Amazon Alexa on the cards going forward.

Malaysia Airlines is not the only carrier to have introduced a chatbot for flight booking as well as customer service.

Icelandair worked with Travelaer back in mid-2016 to deliver a search and booking service also via Facebook Messenger. It was closely followed by Aero Mexico.

A year ago Finnair partnered with Caravelo to unveil Finn, a chatbot on Messenger built using the NDC technology standard.

Around the same time KLM launched its own initiative called Bluebot. Both airlines have also talked of bringing chat services to other channels such as WeChat.

A recent report by Phocuswright entitled 'Bots: a Bright Future, or Destined for the Scap Heap?' examines what's next for chatbots and the impact of voice on the artificial intelligence-powered assistants going forward.