AEO INDEX OCTOBER 2026 USA: Delta is the airline AI ranks first most often, but the three engines agree on the top carrier for only 3 of 10 questions
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews the same travel question and you may well get three different airlines.
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Delta is the airline AI ranks first most often. In the October 2026 AEO Index for Airlines, ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews put it first in 11 of 30 answers, and it leads the category with an AI Rank Score of 54.3. Southwest (43.3) and JetBlue (35.7) come next. The score runs from 0 to 100 and is weighted by position, so an airline gets more credit for being named near the top of an answer. A 100 would mean first on all three engines for every question.
The catch is that the engines rarely agree. They named the same top airline for just 3 of the 10 questions: domestic flights, legroom and reliability. Google AI Overviews put Delta first twice, compared with five times on ChatGPT and four on Gemini. It also ranked Singapore Airlines first three times, which neither of the other engines did even once.
The answers come from one U.S. location, collected on 21 October 2026, with analysis by markaeo.com. The full October 2026 report breaks out every question and engine.
Where do the engines split?
On three questions, each engine named a different airline first:
- International flights: Delta on ChatGPT, Qatar Airways on Gemini, Singapore Airlines on AI Overviews. Qatar Airways wins on score, at 70.
- First class: American on ChatGPT, Air France on Gemini, Singapore Airlines on AI Overviews. Air France wins at 60, the lowest winning score in the category.
- Families: Southwest on ChatGPT, JetBlue on Gemini, American on AI Overviews. JetBlue wins at 80.
The broadest question split too. Asked for the “best airline”, ChatGPT and Gemini named Delta first and AI Overviews named Singapore Airlines. For budget travel, ChatGPT went with Spirit while the other two chose Southwest, which wins that question at 93.
The data doesn’t say why AI Overviews reached for foreign carriers more often. It does show that an airline’s spot on one engine tells you little about its spot on the other two.
What are the engines reading?
Not much from the airlines themselves. Of 147 citations from 89 websites, 5 (3.4%) went to an airline’s own site. The most cited website was youtube.com, with 15 citations spread across all ten questions, 11 of them from AI Overviews.
AI Overviews pulled from social media in a way the other two didn’t. It cited facebook.com 5 times and instagram.com 4 times, and video, social and forum sites made up 33.8% of its citations. ChatGPT cited Reddit or YouTube just 3 times in total, relying instead on blogs and editorial sites, with going.com (5 citations) at the top. Gemini cited sources in only 3 of its 10 answers.
Who gets named but not picked?
United is the clearest case. It appears in 87% of answers, the highest visibility of any airline, and all three engines named it on 8 of the 10 questions. None of them ranked it first on any. Delta, at 83% visibility, turned its mentions into 11 first places.
We read 82 of the pages the engines cited. Delta was the most-mentioned airline on 26 of them, United on 8. This data can’t tell us whether that coverage shapes the rankings or whether the two simply move together.
What does this mean for airline marketing teams?
As I see it, airlines have to treat each engine as a separate channel. A team that checks ChatGPT, sees its carrier near the top and stops there has looked at one engine out of three, and in this category the other two often disagree.
The source mix points the same way. A third of AI Overviews’ citations come from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. That makes flight reviews and travelers’ own posts part of an airline’s AEO footprint, whether or not the brand team runs those channels.
What to watch next
International flights and first class are the two questions foreign carriers win, and both were three-way splits this month. I’d also keep an eye on families. November will show whether the engines drift any closer together, and the full October 2026 report has this month’s baseline.
How we measured: we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews 10 non-branded airline questions, for 30 answers in all, collected on 21 October 2026 from a single U.S. location. AI answers vary by time, place and user. The full method and notice are in the report.
Sources
- Answer Engine Daily AEO Index: Airlines, October 2026
