Richard Masters, vice-president of data and artificial intelligence (AI) at Virgin Atlantic, is an expert in enterprise data, but his career began somewhere different – space. Before moving into analytics, Masters completed a PhD in astrophysics at the University of Oxford, working on two major projects.
“One was building an instrument in the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is weighing galaxies, and the other one was looking at dark matter in galaxies using data from the Hubble Space Telescope,” he says, reflecting on his academic experiences and time as an astrophysicist.
An outsider looking in might assume there’s little relationship between high-level science and creating customer-focused services for major companies. However, Masters says his work observing the grandeur of the cosmos provided the perfect preparation for dealing with the minutiae of enterprise information at Virgin.
“You have a lot of noisy data that comes in from those telescopes,” he says. “You spend most of your time removing noise so you can look at the galaxies and the stars. Once you’ve removed that noise, you’re left with a signal that you’re going to do some analysis on to get your insight.”
It’s an approach that echoes through to his present role. Masters says his longstanding focus on fine details has become an obsession as a data leader: “Can I simplify and remove as much noise as possible from anything we’re doing?”
Leading data initiatives
After leaving academia, Masters applied his experience in a range of industries, including as a data analysis consultant looking at cyber intelligence and graph networks at Detica. He then worked as a data science manager with consultant EY before his first three-year stint at Virgin between 2018 and 2021, where he rose to head of data science and engineering.
Masters left the airline to return to EY, where he was given the chance to build products for compliance and behavioural analytics as an assistant director. After two-and-a-half years honing his craft at EY, he returned to Virgin Atlantic in November 2023. He was eager to step into a senior data leadership role at a company he knew and respected.
“I want to build things, and I want to work with people who understand and trust me to build those things. What led me back to Virgin is that they’ve got the right platforms and mindsets within the teams”
Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic
“I came back because of the conversations with the executive team. We considered the opportunities where AI could be applied across the sector. They weren’t just thinking, ‘We want you to come and build a chatbot’,” he says.
“It was more like, ‘We know how this technology could be used to make some of the delivery pipelines quicker and the quality assurance better, but we also want to consider the foundational elements and make our data right’. That focus on multiple areas was attractive. I came back to Virgin to focus on customer behaviour and optimisation in the airline industry and to think about the things we can do to fine-tune decision-making practices.”
The draw of the Virgin brand was also a big factor. “I want to build things, and I want to work with people who understand and trust me to build those things,” he says. “What led me back to Virgin is that, like at EY, they’ve got the right platforms and mindsets within the teams. But the opportunity to own the end-to-end process here was fantastic.”
Looking back on his career journey, Masters says focusing on fine details has allowed him to help his executive peers see the benefits of data-led change. “Clarity of thought is essential,” he says, summarising the characteristics that define a successful data leader in the age of AI.
“You need to distil everything that’s going on. Even at the strategic level, there’s noise and opinions, nomenclature and obfuscation. Technical people use lots of acronyms. At all levels, you want to simplify things as much as possible. That means asking yourself, ‘Do I understand what I’m talking about?’,” he says.
“The way I can do that is to provide clearer explanations. An academic background helps with that requirement because you have experience in distilling complex concepts into something more straightforward. That simplification is also important when you talk to your team, so you can translate and say, ‘If we can boost our Net Promoter Score, for example, we can show how we’re using data to improve people’s experiences on the plane’.”
Managing new implementations
Masters says his responsibilities cover all aspects of data use across the organisation, from analytical data engineering and maintenance through to the operation control centre and customer and commercial applications. The other critical element of his role is leading AI developments and asking key questions about implementations.
“So, how are we using AI?” he says. “What platforms should we use and who should we partner with? How do we ensure technologies are effective and that we’re investing in the right areas? And what does responsible AI mean for us? For me, that question comes down to our use of data and augmentation – that human loop of assurance around data lineage.”
Masters says the significance of strong AI practices across business processes continues to increase, particularly for governance and ethics.
“AI has become an extension of our data protection process. We ensure that focus is critical to our work,” he says.
“Even before recent developments in generative AI [GenAI], bias in machine learning has always been a consideration when you’re building or using models. You must make people aware of the potential for bias and help them understand that, when they use these tools, they generate more data. Our people then have responsibility for managing that data.”
Masters says some of his big achievements during the past 18 months at Virgin have been centred on data-enabled decision-making support for key business areas. He says insight is used to boost operational processes, hone customer services and develop new knowledge management capabilities.
“Our ability to assure the data and models are correct has been a big achievement for us,” he says. “I’ve got the team into a mindset of asking, ‘Is it right?’, and building capabilities. We’ve created this factory on the platform, which I’m proud of because I can see where we can keep extending that approach.”
Developing AI capabilities
One area of significant progress is data foundations. When Masters returned to Virgin in late 2023, the airline’s executive team was eager to exploit AI.
He helped implement the Databricks platform during his first spell with the business. After rejoining the firm, Masters explored how the technology could provide the foundations for generative AI applications that optimise services and quicken decision-making processes.
Virgin is now using Databricks, particularly the technology specialist’s Unity Catalog, to bring disparate data sources together and create a centralised location for the information that powers the firm’s AI-enabled services. The airline is using GenAI, including Databricks’ interface Genie, for a range of initiatives.
One example is summarisation and categorisation. The health and safety team is using AI to identify priority incidents rather than trawling through a long list. This approach is being applied as a model for sifting and prioritising issues in other areas of the business, including customer care messages via email.
The latest application of the approach is for knowledge management. Virgin’s staff use different systems, such as Genesys for the call centre, Dynamics for customer care, and apps for the crew that traditionally store data in separate places. Using Databricks, data is stored in a single location. Employees then run language models to search and summarise information.
“You can maintain that one dataset as policies update and then make sure everyone’s singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to our different systems,” says Masters. “So, that’s where GenAI can help you manage data as well.”
He says the key lesson from exploration into GenAI is that a solution in one area of the business can be reused somewhere else: “What we’re doing is building a bunch of capabilities, so as things come up, such as doing something with our app when it comes to GenAI, we can draw on these capabilities as we need them later on.”
Delivering seamless experiences
Masters recognises that the endpoint for data-enabled travel during the next few years is more personalisation and higher-quality, seamless experiences. However, reaching that point means answering some challenging questions.
“How much do you want to know about AI as a customer?” he says. “The answer is, you don’t, you just want your experience to be better. So, customers want us to know more about them within the right context – to deal with things quickly in the event of something happening or provide better information along their journey.”
We want to move to a point where you shouldn’t need to check in [for your flight]. We should know enough about you that we just need to ensure you turn up on the day of your flight. Everything else is handled through identity and the system Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic
Masters wants to use AI, digital experiences and data to augment the airline’s professionals. Virgin’s staff should be able to blend these technological capabilities with their own experiences to enable better services without AI being part of the conversation with the customer. Across the broader industry, he notes the shift to AI-enabled automation.
“We want to move to a point where you shouldn’t need to check in [for your flight],” he says. “We should know enough about you that we just need to ensure you turn up on the day of your flight. Everything else is handled through identity and the system. That’s where the industry is moving. And actually, AI can help us in the transition to that state, versus building big solutions that will become obsolete or prohibit us from moving quickly.”
Masters says reaching that stage will require industry alignment on frameworks, terminologies and tools, particularly when it comes to integrations with other elements of the passenger journey, such as connecting transportation and destination hotels. However, he expects progress to be rapid as the promise of emerging technology is realised.
“You’ll see more alignment across the industry during the next few years,” he says. “At Virgin Atlantic, that progress is going to be around where we can use data to let our teams unleash more of what makes our airline special.”
