Etraveli Group just opened its flight engine to AI agents. Here’s my view: that isn’t airlines winning distribution. It’s an OTA quietly becoming the default flight shelf inside ChatGPT, Claude and whatever agent comes next, while airlines still think “AI” means a nicer chatbot on their own site.
If your product only shows up when someone else’s agent asks someone else’s flight platform, you don’t own the booking. You supply it.
What’s actually happening
On 28 October, Etraveli launched Flight MCP, a Model Context Protocol layer that lets developers connect Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP-compatible client to real-time flight search across more than 550 airlines in 75+ markets. Fare selection, passenger details, seats and bags can sit inside the conversation. The traveller then opens a hosted payment page.
PhocusWire and Business Travel News both note the important bit: the booking is made through Etraveli’s Flightnetwork brand, which handles changes, cancellations and refunds. Partners who want to take payment themselves need a commercial deal. Andreas Marquardt, Etraveli’s chief corporate development officer, called MCP “table stakes” and said the company wants to be the “flight infrastructure layer for AI and digital commerce.”
This isn’t a one-off. Days later, Kiwi.com said it had expanded its own MCP so travellers can search live flights inside ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini Enterprise, then drop into Kiwi’s booking funnel. It claims high-intent conversational searches on that MCP grew tenfold since January 2026. Two flight OTAs, same week, same race: sit under the agent, not beside it.
Infrastructure is the new OTA
Etraveli already powers Booking.com flights and is a major fulfilment partner for Skyscanner. Flight MCP extends that model into Business-to-Agent. The agent looks clever. The traveller feels in control. The confirmation email still comes from Flightnetwork.
That’s the tell. Hotels have been arguing about whether to open their websites to agents, as I wrote when Hilton said it was plugged into every AI agent and when Apaleo’s MCP use jumped 70%. Airlines face a sharper version of the same problem. Flights are messy: dynamic fares, multi-carrier itineraries, rules, payments, ticketing, servicing. Whoever solves that mess for the agent becomes the merchant the agent trusts.
Right now that merchant is not BA, Lufthansa or Ryanair. It’s the company that already sells flights as a platform.
Airlines are optimising the wrong surface
Most airline “AI” work still sits on owned channels: chatbots, rebooking tools, NDC polish, app assistants. Useful. Not enough. I’ve argued before that AI can know your airline’s name and still send the click elsewhere, and that airlines want AI to rebook you before they’re ready for your AI to negotiate.
Flight MCP makes that gap concrete. An agent doesn’t need your branded app if it can search 550 airlines through one connector and complete payment on a hosted page. Your schedule becomes inventory. Your brand becomes a line in a shortlist. Your servicing rules become someone else’s call centre problem — until the disruption, when the passenger suddenly remembers who flew the metal.
Google already showed hotels how this goes when it wrote the booking rules first. I covered that when hotels didn’t get a seat at the table. Flights are next, and the first movers aren’t the carriers. They’re the aggregators who already live between search and ticket.
What “direct” has to mean now
If airlines want agent traffic without becoming raw feed, they need something an OTA MCP can’t copy cheaply:
- Agent-readable offers, not just fares. Bundles, disruption rights, lounge access, change policies and loyalty value have to be structured so an agent can prefer them for a reason, not only for price.
- A servicing path the agent can call. Search without change and refund tools is a demo. Agents will stick with the platform that can finish the trip when the first leg dies.
- Clear merchant identity. If the payment page, confirmation and customer service all belong to Flightnetwork or Kiwi, that’s not airline direct. Stop celebrating “AI distribution” that is really OTA distribution with a new protocol.
- Selective connectivity. Be available to agents. Don’t hand them only the commodity economy fare that invites endless re-shopping.
The infrastructure layer is being claimed
Marquardt says different interfaces will coexist: webpage, chat, hybrids. Fine. The commercial question is simpler. When the chat interface wins a booking, who is the retailer?
Etraveli and Kiwi are answering that in public. Hotels are still arguing about bots and brand.com. Airlines are still polishing apps. Meanwhile the flight shelf inside the agent is being stocked by companies that already know how to take payment, ticket and service at scale.
So, is Flight MCP a gift to airlines, or the moment the next intermediary locked in the aisle seat? I know where I stand. Tell me where you do.
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