Jeju Air uses AI for dangerous goods checks and overnight customer service
Jeju Air's HI JECO chatbot, launched in December 2023, now takes more than a third of its consultations in the hours the call centre is closed. In June 2026 the airline added JRAG, an in-house tool that reads photographs of passengers' items and checks them against IATA dangerous goods rules.
The operating picture
Questions at night, batteries at the counter
Boeing 737 - Jeju air - チェジュ航空. Photograph: エムティ / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped to fit). Illustrates the airline, not an AI deployment.
Jeju Air's documented AI work answers two practical problems for a low-cost carrier. Passengers ask questions after the call centre closes at 7pm, and at check-in staff must decide quickly whether a power bank or an unfamiliar product can fly, and where it should go.
Both tools are documented in Korean business press reports quoting the airline. The chatbot has usage figures stretching over two years; the dangerous goods tool has been in use only since June 2026 and has none yet.
Selected implementations
The work behind the evidence
01 / Deployed
Covering the hours the call centre is closed
The operational problem
Jeju Air's call centre closes between 7pm and 9am, and passengers overseas or travelling overnight still need answers about bookings and flight status.
What the evidence reports
Jeju Air introduced HI JECO in December 2023 and describes it as the first generative AI chatbot at a Korean airline. Korean press reported in June 2025 that it handled about 160,870 consultations between January and May 2025, up about 165% on a year earlier, while call centre consultations fell 18.4%; 31.6% of chatbot sessions came between 7pm and 9am. In June 2026 The Herald Business reported that more than 92,400 consultations, 37.8% of the total, were after hours and 22.8% were in languages other than Korean.
Operational significance
The overnight share is the clearest measure here. Those are enquiries that would otherwise have waited until morning.
Evidence still needed
The fall in call centre contacts coincides with the chatbot's growth, but Jeju Air has not shown that one caused the other, and it has not published resolution or escalation rates. All figures come from the airline through press reports.
Lithium batteries and other dangerous goods must be identified at check-in and sent to the cabin, the hold or neither under IATA rules, often within seconds at a busy counter.
What the evidence reports
The Herald Business and Hankyung reported on 1 June 2026 that Jeju Air had begun using JRAG, its Regulation-based AI Guide, at domestic branches starting with Incheon (ICN) and at cargo sites. Staff photograph an item; optical character recognition and vision AI read the packaging text, composition markings and battery capacity, and the system checks them against the latest IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations and the airline's own standards. The tool was built in-house, with multilingual support and overseas branches to follow.
Operational significance
A Jeju Air official linked the tool directly to the risk of power bank fires. A consistent check at the counter takes the place of each agent's memory of a long regulation that IATA revises every year.
Evidence still needed
No accuracy, usage or incident figures have been published, and the reports do not say whether the tool's advice is final or checked by a supervisor.
A source can verify an announcement without verifying its projected outcome.
The wider register
Other tracked activity
Other records are shown separately, including non-AI technology and programmes at different stages of deployment. A register entry does not establish a measured AI benefit.
No other publicly listed records.
Editorial assessment
Jeju Air's AI work is practical and close to the passenger: answering questions overnight and checking what travellers bring to the airport.
The next evidence worth having is JRAG's accuracy against a supervisor's judgement, and whether HI JECO resolves enquiries or simply moves them to another channel.
Live data from the Aerostack register. Status reflects published evidence only. See Our approach for how records are graded.
Aerostack register · 2 tracked deployments
Aerostack tracks AI deployments across airports and airlines, with the published evidence behind each record. Photography is real aviation imagery. Record thumbnails may show the named airport or airline; other photographs do not.
