FEATURE
His remit spans the entire business, from engineering and maintenance through to commercial and customer operations.
Alongside this, he leads the airline’ s AI strategy: what to build, what to buy, who to partner with, and how to use AI responsibly.
“ Essentially, if the term AI comes up, you come to me,” he said.“ Our focus is on optimising decision support.”
Richard’ s career began in astrophysics, a background that still shapes how he approaches data today.
“ The analogy I always use is noise. As an astrophysicist, you’ re working with very noisy signals from telescope observations. You use data reduction pipelines to remove that noise and reveal the signal – the clear picture of a galaxy. That idea has guided my entire career: how do we extract a clear signal so people can make better decisions?”
After completing his PhD, Richard moved into systems and cyber intelligence, before joining Ernst & Young’ s forensics team, where he focused on compliance and behavioural analytics. He later joined Virgin Atlantic, working at the airline from 2018 to 2021 – a period defined by the COVID-19 crisis.
“ We had to do a lot of difficult but important work to keep the airline going,” he reflects.
Recognising AI’ s turning point
It was in the post-COVID landscape that Richard saw a shift.
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