The Flight Operating System Rolling Out Across the Ryanair Group
Flight ops software with seamlessly integrated multiple components
Euristiq’s customer, one of Europe’s largest airlines, required a flight operations software to enhance flight management. Given the high volume of daily flights, the solution needed to be scalable and highly reliable. Euristiq’s engineers joined a large, globally distributed team spanning multiple countries to contribute to this complex system.
Euristiq was involved in developing a comprehensive flight management system, integrating critical components for business process management, including crew management and flight scheduling. This large-scale system connects with external systems and airports, maintaining availability, stability, and reliability.
Ryanair in numbers
Passengers served in March 2025
On-time arrivals — almost all flights arriving as scheduled
Flights conducted during March 2025
Aviation-grade reliability, at Ryanair’s scale
Scale and reliability under daily flight volume
Given the high volume of daily flights, the solution needed to be scalable and highly reliable — capable of handling spiky load without downtime.
Downtime means fines, not just outages
Any system disruption could lead to financial losses and regulatory fines. Availability, stability, and reliability are critical attributes in aviation.
Manual, spreadsheet-driven processes
Business-process tasks were previously managed manually via Excel spreadsheets and repetitive data entry — slow, error-prone, and hard to audit.
Complex integration across systems and airports
A key challenge was the integration of various components responsible for different aspects of flight operations, connecting with external systems and airports.
One airline operating system
for core business processes
Flight Time Limitations (FTL): crew scheduling and duty periods
Our primary focus was on the Flight Time Limitations (FTL) module, which includes Crew Scheduling and Duty Periods management. These components enable managers to automatically assign duties to crew members while ensuring compliance with flight and duty time limitations (e.g., maximum flight hours per period, duty hour restrictions), crew training requirements, sick leaves, vacations, and operational constraints.
We developed an advanced algorithm to optimize crew duty assignments, ensuring efficient and compliant scheduling.
Automatic publishing of new schedules
The schedule management component employs an intelligent scheduling algorithm that factors in aircraft availability, routes and route frequencies, airport time slots, closures, and curfews, regulatory and operational constraints, etc.
Once a new schedule is published, it automatically triggers the Crew Scheduling and Duty Periods modules, ensuring a fully synchronized workflow.
Real-time disruption management
Airline staff track current flights, delays, and disruptions in real time and take immediate corrective actions — cancellations, rerouting, and rescheduling — with every operational change recorded in a comprehensive history and synchronized with airports and regulatory systems.
Migration from Azure to AWS
The first MVP of the flight ops software was developed on the Azure platform, using .NET, Windows and Azure infrastructure. However, the airline faced challenges to efficiently support and integrate it with other systems, as all major company products were running on AWS.
Maintaining two cloud providers introduced additional overhead costs and operational complexity. Furthermore, Azure outages in certain regions occasionally led to service downtime, which is critical for an airline’s real-time operations.
Recognizing these challenges, we facilitated full cloud migration from Azure to AWS, ensuring seamless integration with existing airline systems. This involved:
- Data migration from the legacy system
- Implementing complex business logic
- Integrating system components using Message Bus for efficient communication and event-driven processing
This migration significantly improved system resilience, cost efficiency, and maintainability.
Move mission-critical aviation workloads to AWS — without downtime
One flight operations system,
now rolling out across the Ryanair Group
Group-wide rollout
The ROCS operational system is currently being implemented across the Ryanair Group — rolled out to Ryanair’s subsidiary airlines.
Zero-disruption transition
The new system was deployed in parallel with the existing one, allowing airline staff to gradually adapt to the changes while minimizing disruption.
Spreadsheets retired
Tasks previously managed manually via Excel spreadsheets and repetitive data entry are automated within dedicated microservices.
Building or scaling an airline operations platform?
FAQ
What is a flight operating system?
A flight operating system is the software that manages an airline’s core business processes in one place: tracking current flights, delays, and disruptions in real time, publishing schedules, and assigning crew duties in compliance with flight and duty time limitations. ROCS, which Euristiq co-developed for Ryanair, is built as multiple microservices — each responsible for a specific business process — automating tasks previously managed manually via Excel spreadsheets. It synchronizes operational data with airports and regulatory systems to ensure compliance and accuracy.
Why did Ryanair migrate its flight ops software from Azure to AWS?
Ryanair migrated its flight ops software from Azure to AWS because all major company products were already running on AWS, and maintaining two cloud providers introduced additional overhead costs and operational complexity. Azure outages in certain regions also occasionally led to service downtime — critical for an airline’s real-time operations. Euristiq facilitated the full migration, covering data migration from the legacy system, complex business logic, and component integration via Message Bus for event-driven processing. The migration significantly improved system resilience, cost efficiency, and maintainability.
How do airlines choose a software consultancy for an integrated ops platform?
Airlines evaluating a software consultancy for an integrated ops platform look for proven delivery on comparable systems: scalability under a high volume of daily flights, fault tolerance for spiky load, and experience integrating components like crew scheduling, duty periods, and schedule publishing with external airport and regulatory systems. Euristiq’s work on ROCS for Ryanair covers exactly this scope — architectural engineering, front-end and back-end development, SaaS deployment, and technical consulting inside a large, globally distributed engineering team — with the system now being implemented across the Ryanair Group.
Should an airline manage disruptions in its flight planning system or a dedicated ops control tool?
In ROCS, disruption management is integrated directly into the operating system rather than split into a separate tool. Airline staff track current flights, delays, and disruptions in real time and take immediate corrective actions — cancellations, rerouting, and rescheduling — from the same system that publishes schedules. Because a published schedule automatically triggers the Crew Scheduling and Duty Periods modules, every disruption decision stays synchronized with crew compliance. For operations where downtime means financial losses and regulatory fines, that integration removes the gaps a standalone tool would create.
Recent cases
Corporate Travel Booking Software That Doubled Bookings and Cut Failed Payments by 34%
Digital Identity Verification with 100% PII Protection
