Airside Labs - AI Systems for Travel & Aviation

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    Travel Inspiration Lives on TikTok. The Booking Still Lives in 47 Browser Tabs.
    Podcast · Episode 23

    Travel Inspiration Lives on TikTok. The Booking Still Lives in 47 Browser Tabs.

    Billions of pieces of travel content flood TikTok and Instagram every day, yet the booking still happens across 47 chaotic browser tabs — because the call to action was never built. Nancy Li Smith, CEO and founder of social travel platform Boop, unpacks how on-device AI, a social trust graph, and a 50/50 creator commission model are rewiring the entire travel discovery-to-booking pipeline.

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    Pre-Flight aviation AI benchmark results dashboard
    Live Dashboard

    Pre-Flight Benchmark Dashboard

    A live dashboard of how leading AI models perform on aviation safety tasks. Compare frontier hosted models with open-weight local ones, ranked against a human-expert baseline. We update it as we run new evaluations.

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    Prompt injection risk in aviation AI

    Prompt Injection Risk in Aviation AI: White Paper

    1,776 adversarial test cases against commercial AI systems processing standard aviation data formats. 43% of attacks produced incorrect safety-critical outputs. Read the full methodology, results, and mitigation framework.

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    Aviation AI use case directory

    Aviation AI Use Case Directory

    Browse our directory of aviation AI applications, from safety systems to customer service. See how AI is being used across aviation operations.

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    Hugging Face logo

    Airside Labs on Hugging Face

    Access our comprehensive collection of aviation AI datasets, models, and benchmarks on Hugging Face. Open-source resources specifically designed for aviation AI systems.

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    UK AISI logo

    Pre-Flight Benchmark on UK AISI Inspect AI

    The Pre-Flight aviation intelligence benchmark is now available on the UK AI Security Institute's Inspect AI evaluation framework. Evaluate AI systems against aviation-specific criteria.

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    Latest Insights

    Explore our latest research, analysis, and industry updates

    Top Aviation AI Startups Building the Future of Flight in 2026
    Analysis

    Top Aviation AI Startups Building the Future of Flight in 2026

    An honest, sourced map of the startups building aviation AI in 2026 — flight operations, cockpit copilots, autonomy, and the truth about aviation foundation models — plus the independent assurance layer that proves these systems are safe.

    Airside Labs Team30 Jun 2026
    Top Platforms for Evaluating Aviation AI in 2026
    Analysis

    Top Platforms for Evaluating Aviation AI in 2026

    A field guide to the platforms and benchmarks for evaluating aviation AI in 2026 — domain-specific benchmarks, general eval platforms, security firms, and consultancies — and how to choose the right one for your use case.

    Airside Labs Team30 Jun 2026
    Abundance of Competence, Scarcity of Trust
    Analysis

    Abundance of Competence, Scarcity of Trust

    The UK government's AI Scenarios 2030 models how AI's gains get divided, yet not how cheap competence grows the pie, or why, when everything starts to look good, trust and permission become the only scarce goods.

    Alex Brooker17 Jun 2026
    Prompt Injection Risk in Aviation
    Security

    Prompt Injection Risk in Aviation

    1,776 adversarial test cases against LLMs processing standard aviation data formats reveal systematic vulnerabilities in how large language models handle prompt injection in safety-critical contexts.

    Alex Brooker12 Mar 2026
    98.7% Retrieval Accuracy from Metadata You Already Have
    Research

    98.7% Retrieval Accuracy from Metadata You Already Have

    Fine-tuning embedding models for aviation NOTAM retrieval — and why bigger models aren't always better out of the box.

    Alex Brooker2 Mar 2026
    Comparative Analysis: Pre-Flight vs MITRE/FAA ALUE Benchmarks
    Research

    Comparative Analysis: Pre-Flight vs MITRE/FAA ALUE Benchmarks

    A comprehensive analysis of two pioneering aviation LLM assurance benchmarks, examining how Airside Labs' Pre-Flight and MITRE/FAA's ALUE address distinct operational layers in aerospace AI safety.

    Airside Labs Team4 Nov 2025
    Alternatives to Big Cyber for LLM Pen Testing
    Security

    Alternatives to Big Cyber for LLM Pen Testing

    When organisations think about AI security testing, many automatically turn to established cybersecurity firms. But LLM penetration testing requires fundamentally different expertise.

    Airside Labs Team29 Sept 2025
    Customer AI Chatbot Flying Blind: The Hidden Risks
    Testing

    Customer AI Chatbot Flying Blind: The Hidden Risks

    A comprehensive analysis of 11 leading language models reveals critical safety gaps that could ground your customer service operations.

    Airside Labs Team27 Aug 2025
    Crescendo: How Escalating Conversations Break AI Guardrails
    Security

    Crescendo: How Escalating Conversations Break AI Guardrails

    Why single prompt testing misses the most dangerous AI failures and how the crescendo technique is exposing critical vulnerabilities in customer service systems.

    Airside Labs Team16 Aug 2025
    Alternative to Big Four AI Testing: Why Domains Matter
    Testing

    Alternative to Big Four AI Testing: Why Domains Matter

    The AI revolution is sweeping across industries faster than ever, but when it comes to testing and validating these AI systems, many organisations are turning to generic frameworks.

    Airside Labs Team23 Jul 2025
    Airside Labs Responds to the UK AI Opportunities Action Plan
    Regulation

    Airside Labs Responds to the UK AI Opportunities Action Plan

    At Airside Labs, we're committed to advancing aviation technology through innovative AI solutions while maintaining the industry's paramount focus on safety.

    Airside Labs Team5 May 2025
    Airside Labs Responds to UK CAA's AI in Aerospace Request
    Regulation

    Airside Labs Responds to UK CAA's AI in Aerospace Request

    At Airside Labs, we're committed to advancing aviation technology through innovative AI solutions while maintaining the industry's paramount focus on safety.

    Airside Labs Team4 May 2025
    Airside Pre-Flight Benchmark Joins AISI Evaluations Package
    Press Release

    Airside Pre-Flight Benchmark Joins AISI Evaluations Package

    Aviation AI Benchmark Now Available Through UK's AI Security Institute's inspect_evals Framework

    Airside Labs Team11 Apr 2025
    PRESS RELEASE: Airside Labs Launches Pre-Flight AI Benchmark on GitHub
    Press Release

    PRESS RELEASE: Airside Labs Launches Pre-Flight AI Benchmark on GitHub

    Aviation AI Testing Framework Now Available for Industry Contributions

    Airside Labs Team1 Feb 2025
    Aviation Eval – Flight Test 1: Anthropic Models Compared
    Testing

    Aviation Eval – Flight Test 1: Anthropic Models Compared

    With the exciting release of Anthropic's updated Sonnet and Haiku models, we're sharing our first evaluation results from the Pre-Flight benchmark.

    Airside Labs Team25 Nov 2024
    Airside Labs Launches at Royal Aeronautical Society Event
    Press Release

    Airside Labs Launches at Royal Aeronautical Society Event

    New Aviation AI Venture Unveils Industry-First Benchmark for AI Model Testing

    Airside Labs Team19 Nov 2024
    Preflight Aviation Intelligence Benchmark: Contributor Guide
    Guide

    Preflight Aviation Intelligence Benchmark: Contributor Guide

    We are collecting the most challenging and comprehensive set of aviation-related questions ever assembled for AI evaluation.

    Airside Labs Team2 Oct 2024
    GAIA: Benchmarking Next-Gen AI Assistants for Aviation
    Research

    GAIA: Benchmarking Next-Gen AI Assistants for Aviation

    Benchmarks play a crucial role in measuring AI progress and setting new standards. GAIA is one such benchmark that has caught our attention.

    Airside Labs Team30 Sept 2024

    What does Airside Labs do?

    Airside Labs builds and independently tests AI systems for aviation. We develop domain specific AI benchmarks, adversarial datasets, and assurance tooling. The Pre-Flight benchmark is one tool among many. It is integrated into the UK AI Security Institute's Inspect AI framework. What makes the systems better is use case specific testing and red teaming. We map findings to the EU AI Act, OWASP LLM Top 10, NIST AI RMF, and MITRE ATLAS for audit ready evidence.

    Generic "Big Four" consultancy and cybersecurity firm AI testing covers governance breadth but not aviation's safety critical context, where the same model failure is a minor annoyance in one industry and a safety hazard in another. For National Airspace System integration, the MITRE/FAA ALUE benchmark is complementary. See our Pre-Flight vs ALUE comparison.