How LAXcar uses AI without handing over transport planning
Arsen Misakyan is CEO and Founder of LAXcar, which provides executive car, airport transfer and group transportation services across Southern California. In this conversation, Misakyan explains where AI helps with routine admin, why experienced staff remain central to complex transport planning, and how customer discovery may be changing.
Use AI for repetitive communication and administrative work, but keep experienced staff responsible for decisions shaped by real-world airport and event constraints. Pair that operational focus with clear service information and a strong online reputation as customers increasingly research options before contacting providers.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
I started LAXcar about 15 years ago with a pretty simple idea: transportation should be reliable, professional, and easy to arrange. What started as a chauffeur service in Los Angeles has grown into a company handling everything from airport transfers and executive travel to large corporate events and transportation for thousands of people.
What makes us different is that we’re not just providing a car and a driver. We actually manage the transportation. Whether it’s one executive arriving at LAX or a company needing 50 vehicles moving between multiple locations, we handle the logistics, scheduling, and coordination behind it all.
A lot of companies can provide a vehicle. The real difference is knowing how to manage everything when plans change, flights get delayed, or hundreds of people need to be somewhere at the same time. That’s where our experience really comes in.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Most of our new business today comes from online searches, referrals, and repeat customers. We’ve been operating in Los Angeles for about 15 years, so we’ve built a solid customer base, and word of mouth has been an important part of our growth.
Where I’d really like to see more business come from is direct relationships with corporations, event organizers, hotels, and organizations that need transportation on a regular basis. We already handle some pretty complex transportation projects for major companies, and that’s an area where I believe we have a lot more room to grow.
The goal is to move beyond customers finding us when they need a ride and build more long-term partnerships where LAXcar becomes their go-to transportation provider.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
One thing we’ve handed over to AI is a good portion of our routine customer communication. We use it to help prepare quotes, respond to inquiries, and handle repetitive administrative work. It saves us time, especially when we’re dealing with multiple transportation requests and complicated itineraries.
One area where I’ve learned not to rely too much on AI is transportation planning. For example, we might have a corporate group of 200 people arriving at LAX on different flights, all needing transportation to several hotels. AI can put together a schedule and suggest how many vehicles we’ll need, but it might assume a motorcoach can pull up anywhere at the airport or that 50 passengers can collect their luggage and board a bus in 15 minutes. Anyone who’s actually managed group transportation at LAX knows it doesn’t work that way.
We’ve found that AI is great for getting the initial work done, but we still rely on our experienced team to make the final operational decisions. At the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Yes, definitely. We’ve noticed that customers are coming to us much better informed than they used to. A few years ago, someone would call and ask what type of vehicle they needed or how much an airport transfer would cost. Now, many already have an idea of the vehicle, the service, and even the price range before contacting us.
As for ChatGPT and other AI assistants, I think we’re still in the early stages. It’s not yet a major source of business for us, at least not one we can reliably measure. But I wouldn’t be surprised if customers are already using AI to research transportation companies, compare options, and narrow down their choices before visiting our website.
What’s interesting to me is that we’re moving from a world where customers search Google and compare ten different companies to one where they might simply ask an AI assistant to recommend the best transportation provider. For a business like ours, that could completely change how we attract new customers.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I’d tell them to start using AI now, but focus on solving actual business problems rather than chasing every new tool that comes out.
In transportation, we spend a tremendous amount of time preparing quotes, reviewing itineraries, answering customer questions, and coordinating vehicles and drivers. If AI can take even 30% of that administrative workload off your team, that’s a significant improvement. I’d start there, with the repetitive tasks that consume time but don’t necessarily require human judgment.
I’d also pay attention to how AI is changing the way customers find businesses. Make sure your website clearly explains your services, keep your online reputation strong, and start thinking beyond traditional Google rankings. AI recommendations could become an important source of customers.
What I’d ignore is the hype that AI is going to run your entire business. Transportation is a real-world operation. When a flight is delayed, a driver gets stuck in traffic, or 200 passengers are waiting for buses, you need experienced people making decisions.
Use AI to make your team more productive, not to replace the experience that makes your company valuable.
Thank you to Arsen Misakyan and the team at LAXcar for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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