Airlines recognize that delivering a seamless travel experience will depend on their participation in a broader travel ecosystem. They can’t fly solo and, if they attempt to do so, they risk being relegated to little more than seat providers. That means airlines will need to embrace collaboration with ecosystem partners, within and beyond their traditional industry.

Participating in platform-based ecosystems will give airlines access to potential new customers, along with greater understanding of travelers’ fast changing requirements. That’s never been more important.

In the transformation to digital, airlines will find it challenging to source, through traditional channels, the right digital experts and data scientists they’ll need to build out new capabilities. Meanwhile, our research shows that executives are currently less likely to make a direct connection between the digital skills they need (but often lack) and the online labor marketplace’s ability to fill them.

Leveraging on-demand talent pools for specialized expertise will be one key to the rapid innovation companies require to become truly digital businesses.

For airlines, creating human-centered experiences must extend from gate-to-gate to door-to-door travel—expanding the narrow focus on specific services. Airlines must also use technology to embed preferences into the communication channels people naturally want to use rather than force travelers to adapt to travel-specific environments.

Airlines companies that shift their thinking to design around their passengers’ preferences, behaviors and lifestyles will be the first to arrive in this new marketplace.

Airlines, in many ways, find themselves in the vortex of volatility, with change coming toward them from all sides: regulatory, market, geo-political, environmental and more. As leaders think about the current market landscape their organizations play in, they need to start contemplating the unthinkable—that the volatility could totally transform the rules of the game.

To stay aloft, more than ever, airlines will need to play a leadership role in the changes happening across their industry.