Data has been a buzzword for decades. I did my PhD in neural networks in '91 at Stanford and we thought that was the time when actually data finally made it. Little did we know at the time that the World Wide Web would someday be invented. So data is the new oil, or as some say, maybe the new soil, for an ecosystem in which things can develop. That is true for the airline space as well. If you think about it, ultimately airlines are a data business. From fuel hedges to frequent flyer programs, all these are data planes.
So it's not so much about the interpretation of data, although I agree with you that indeed every data needs to be interpreted. What matters is what you do with it, what the actions are that you take. Not the actionable outcomes consultants might sell you, but the actual actions that you take.