Providing application development and support services for easyJet’s business-critical operating systems

Background

EasyJet is Europe's leading low-cost airline; it operates more than 200 aircraft on over 600 routes across 30 countries, and serves over 57 million passengers a year.

The core of easyJet's business is the delivery of high-quality, low-cost services based on an agile business model with IT as the enabler: all of its IT systems can be accessed from secure servers anywhere in the world. Fast, flexible and reliable IT applications that enable the airline to run on time are key to helping easyJet stay ahead of the competition in the fast-paced aviation market.

The challenge

After customer feedback highlighted that passengers favoured an allocated seating model, and the flexibility to choose their own seat, the airline decided to trial this across selected routes during the summer. A key challenge was ensuring that the move to allocated seating did not impact easyJet's leading On Time Performance – running on time is absolutely integral to easyJet's success and a key performance indicator.

Consequently, we worked closely with easyJet to develop the underlying operating systems, enabling the airline to provide allocated seating for passengers. The trial of allocated seating was very successful and as a result, easyJet committed to rolling it out across its network.

The solution

We began by updating easyJet's underlying reservation system, eRes. This is the airline's critical business operating system that manages all customer and agent booking data. Sopra Steria also developed easyJet's business partnership platform to accommodate an allocated seating solution for trial flights and later, a full solution to roll out across their entire network.

This required significant interaction with easyJet's online and reservation partners to ensure the solution integrated seamlessly with business critical systems, including the web, which drives 98% of easyJet's bookings.

The allocated seating project was managed and driven entirely from the UK by a close-knit team who worked on site at easyJet's Luton Headquarters. In order to keep costs down, a portion of the development work was off-shored to our Delivery Centre in Noida. Sopra Steria in India provided a dedicated team who worked on the system developments for the reservation system and supported the UK team with testing and on-going business support.

As part of the project, we were able to:

• Develop the eRes and business partnership platform to accommodate the functionality required to provide allocated seats to all passengers
• Deliver system testing and support services to ensure the business-critical systems were operating
• Provide a BI Solution to ensure reporting was available from day one
• Integrate with the website, seating service and other platforms – utilising Microsoft Azure technologies to ensure a seamless experience for the customer, agents and staff
• Offer training and support to ensure ground staff and flight crew were fully trained on the new systems, and able to explain the new service to clients, customers and agents

  The results

  The implementation of the new seating model has not impacted easyJet's on-time performance and passenger feedback has been extremely positive so far:

• Improved passenger satisfaction – by giving passengers the opportunity to choose a seat pre-flight at a small cost, allocated seating is providing a better boarding experience for travellers; it removes the need to queue in the departure lounge to secure a preferred seat
• Making easyJet more attractive to families – this provides peace of mind by enabling families to secure seats together, which is particularly important to those traveling with young children
• Better for the business traveller – providing the option to pre-select a seat means the business traveller can focus on working, rather than having to queue for a preferred seat

   

  Our customers asked us to trial allocated seating and we are really pleased with the positive passenger feedback during the trial. The trial has also shown that we can offer allocated seating while delivering strong On Time Performance ,which is one of the key drivers of passenger satisfaction.
  Trevor Didcock, CIO easyJet