OLIVER BYERS
OLIVER BYERS
TITLE: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER COMPANY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC INDUSTRY: AVIATION
Oliver joined Virgin Atlantic in 2013 and was appointed CFO in September 2020 during the pandemic, having previously held commercial roles including Revenue Management and Customer Loyalty.
The airline now runs hundreds of custom GPTs across departments. Development teams use AI coding tools including Codex to ship features faster. HR built GPTs that answer policy questions. Finance teams use AI to analyse performance data and draft reports.
“ We can see the benefit that it brings day to day … from small-scale trials that we ran all the way through to larger-scale programs that we’ re now running – it’ s delivering tangible benefit. From any CFO’ s perspective you can’ t ignore it – you’ ve got to embrace it,” Oliver says.
The engineering results have been particularly visible. Code gets written and tested faster, which means new features reach customers sooner. In an industry where digital experience drives bookings, that speed matters.
“ We’ ve seen massive adoption of the technology... ultimately what that results in is us getting more code written at a faster pace in front of our customers to give a better experience,” he says.
How OpenAI and Tomoro built Virgin Atlantic Concierge The Concierge project required more than just plugging in OpenAI’ s APIs.
142 February 2026