The Fleet 

A leading U.S. airline was embarking on a massive digital transformation effort to move its workloads to the cloud. It was an ambitious project: transform 80% of the airline’s workloads into microservices on a scalable AWS platform. But cloud modernization would only work if the airline could also modernize the way it built, secured, and deployed its applications. That meant addressing its technical debt, legacy infrastructure, and a deployment model that had become a drag on innovation. 

A Holding Pattern 

The airline had a clear destination, but its existing technology and operating model were making the trip unnecessarily difficult. 

Too Much Technical Debt. Existing infrastructure and accumulated technical debt made it difficult for teams to focus on future innovation. Developers spent too much time fixing and redeploying code and not enough time writing the next generation of applications. 

Manual Deployments. The airline was moving from tens to hundreds of applications on AWS but still relying on traditional deployment practices. Teams were spending two to three days a week on manual deployment work, with an average of 30 developers to maintain and manage deployment environments. 

Security at Scale. Even though the airline wanted to accelerate delivery, it couldn’t do so at the expense of governance. Security and compliance had to be built into the development process from the very beginning. 

A Modern Customer Experience. The airline’s ultimate goal was improving the customer experience by embedding it directly into travel operations, which would also allow it to optimize spend and reduce global carbon emissions through a modern environment. 

Airlines are in the business of moving people, but the technology behind that experience has to move quickly, too. Even a seemingly smooth journey is a collection of applications, platforms, and deployments that all need to work in tandem.  

The solution had to make operations more efficient, resilient, and ready for what came next. That meant connecting business objectives to a practical roadmap and finding a partner who could move the work from strategy to implementation to ongoing operations. 

New Coordinates 

This engagement aligned with two areas of AHEAD’s expertise. 

• Platform & Workload Modernization: Moving workloads to AWS, adopting modern application patterns, and utilizing Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS, and AWS Lambda to improve scalability and developer productivity. 
• Operational Excellence: Bringing consulting, managed services, governance, and prioritized backlog management together in a single modernization effort. 

The work unfolded across three phases: 

Advise 

AHEAD began by charting a comprehensive technology plan for the airline. The cloud strategy had to create better customer experiences, improve operational excellence, support more efficient development, and optimize costs. A dedicated Client Success Manager helped develop and maintain a prioritized backlog throughout the managed services engagement. That governance model gave technical teams a clear view of what needed to happen next while keeping the work connected to the airline’s broader goals. 

Why the Groundwork Mattered: Cloud transformation isn’t a single takeoff event. Like prepping on the runway, it’s a sequence of important decisions: what to migrate, what to modernize, what to automate, and what to stop doing altogether. AHEAD worked with key stakeholders to keep those decisions visible, prioritized, and accountable. 

Build 

AHEAD and Harness then helped the airline establish repeatable, automated software-delivery processes for the teams building and deploying applications on AWS. 

AHEAD created starter kits to reduce cognitive load on development teams. The kits included development files for Go, Python, and Java, along with preconfigured CI/CD pipelines and automated tests that followed team coding standards. That meant a developer could log into a portal, enter five to 10 key pieces of metadata, and receive a ready-to-go starter kit, code repositories, fully configured pipelines, and automated tests within minutes. So instead of spending time manually setting up repositories and CI/CD pipelines, developers could focus instead on writing more code. 

The solution also included Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Amazon Elastic Container Service, and AWS Lambda to support modern application development. Harness provided the software delivery platform and automation needed to make the new process repeatable across the enterprise. 

How It Came to Life: Security was built into the process from the beginning through a shift-left approach. Developers could write secure code, while security teams could focus on their own critical workloads. 

Run 

Even after the solution was live, modernization work continued. AHEAD and Harness tracked the airline’s transformation progress to optimize migration costs and adjust the  approach accordingly as the program expanded. This helped the airline scale quickly on AWS and turn the initial automation investment into engineering productivity and efficiency. 

How It Kept Delivering: Automation gave the airline a durable operating model for scaling cloud deployments without scaling manual effort at the same rate.

Back on Schedule 

With the AWS transformation, the airline is now on its way to greater innovation and future growth. 

Modernized Workloads. The airline modernized 80% of its workloads on AWS, as part of its broader transformation effort for modern application architectures. More than 200 applications are now in production on AWS. 

Repeatable Automation. By simplifying delivery processes, the client reduced the  resources required for deployment by 70% and increased application deployment rates by 75%. Deployment verification overhead also fell by 99%. The airline now only needs one person to verify deployments where it once needed 10. 

Improved Developer Productivity. Pipeline automation increased developer productivity by 40%, so engineers had more time to write new code and advance innovation.  

Consolidated Pipelines. The shift-left approach simplified security and governance for the airline. Software pipelines were reduced by 98% for a streamlined, manageable software delivery environment.

What’s Next 

The airline is already soaring above the clouds. The next stage will see it continue to improve the systems, standards, and engineering practices that make modernization repeatable.  

AWS, AHEAD, and Harness all helped tie cloud adoption to the customer experience, so the airline can continue to modernize at scale. The skies aren’t empty of complexity but they’re easier to navigate with automation doing most of the heavy lifting. This is the outcome that AHEAD and its partners strive for: turning cloud transformation into measurable operational progress and setting the stage for the next phase of innovation.