As airlines and cargo operators race to deliver more connected, digital-first commerce experiences, the technology platforms supporting them must move with the same speed and resilience. For one of the world’s leading air transport technology providers, this meant rethinking how its passenger and cargo commerce systems worked. They needed to deliver a truly connected, end-to-end commerce platform spanning offers, orders, cargo services and settlement. But the reality was more complex than foreseen.
Core systems across cargo management, order creation and billing were evolving independently. Each platform served a purpose, but together they created friction. Data moved in silos. Experiences were inconsistent across airlines and partners. Delivering a unified Offer-to-Settlement journey was harder than it should be.
Fragmented Commerce Stack, Limited Speed, Consistency & Scale
The client’s vision was to build a seamless commerce ecosystem that could support the full airline and cargo value chain. But given its complexity, new releases required greater coordination, testing and manual effort, while increasing the time and risk involved in bringing platform enhancements to market.
For airline customers, this meant slower innovation and fragmented workflows. For cargo operations, it limited the ability to respond quickly to market changes. For internal teams, every new release came with dependencies, effort and risk.
Tu support future growth, the goal was not just to modernize individual applications, but to create a unified, scalable foundation that could help airline customers launch new capabilities faster, improve operational agility and deliver more seamless experiences across the travel and cargo value chain.
And in an ecosystem where airline revenue, cargo efficiency and partner trust are tightly linked, these inefficiencies started to hold back growth.
The Turning Point: Engineering A Unified Platform
Persistent partnered with the client to re-architect their airline and cargo commerce platforms with one clear goal: Simplify complexity while enabling scale.
The approach was grounded in product engineering. Instead of layering fixes, Persistent redesigned the platform using a microservices based architecture, allowing cargo, offer and settlement functions to evolve independently while staying connected.
This unlocked a new way of working.
A modern user experience built on Angular unified fragmented interfaces, making workflows more intuitive across airline users and partners. Reusable UI components ensured consistency across applications, reducing the effort required to launch new features.
On the backend, scalable microservices powered critical capabilities across cargo service management, offer and order flows and billing systems. Data moved more freely across platforms, supporting a more connected airline and cargo ecosystem.
Automation was embedded into the foundation. Improved testing coverage and deployment pipelines allowed teams to release updates faster while maintaining quality.
Persistent’s strength was not just in modernizing systems. It was in shaping a platform that behaves like a product, built to evolve continuously as airline and cargo needs change.
Delivering Faster, Smarter Growth
The transformation delivered impact across the business.
- New capabilities reached the market faster, helping airline customers innovate without being held back by system complexity.
- The platform became more resilient, supporting both airline and air cargo operations with greater reliability and flexibility.
- Release velocity improved significantly, with automation coverage increasing from 40% to 85%, enabling faster and more consistent deployments.
- For airline customers and partners, this meant a more seamless experience across passenger and cargo journeys.
- For internal teams, it reduced complexity and improved productivity.
- For the business, it created a scalable commerce foundation ready for the next phase of growth.
The Bottom Line
In airline and air cargo commerce, disconnected systems slow down everything from revenue to operations. By modernizing fragmented commerce platforms into a connected, product-centric architecture, Persistent helped a global airlines and cargo platform provider turn a complex ecosystem into a connected, agile engine for innovation.
If your commerce platforms cannot evolve as one, can they truly support the speed and scale your customers expect? Partner with persistent to understand how you can simplify complexity, accelerate release cycles and build a platform foundation ready for what’s next.
