After a recent software update, something remarkable happened at one of Europe’s largest airport groups. Data processing speeds increased twelvefold, billing calculations ran four times faster, and what used to take hours now takes minutes. That’s not a minor technical win; it’s transformational. And it’s exactly why we set out to rebuild the core of airport operations and revenue management from the ground up.
We knew the old way wasn’t working
I’ve spent much of my career in mission-critical systems, and few environments are as demanding or as interconnected as an airport. The problem is that most of the tech running them today was designed for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. One where schedules were predictable, data flowed slowly or was siloed, and system upgrades happened every 7 years.
At Veovo, we made a conscious decision to take a different path. Not just to modernize the interface (although our UX is a thing of beauty). Not just adding a dashboard or a few APIs. But fundamentally rethinking how an airport operations platform should work: fast, flexible, open, and always on.
Built for agility. Engineered for reality
For decades, monolithic systems were the norm. They did their job. But today, they’re brittle. You change one thing and risk breaking ten. In a world where operational complexity and passenger patterns seem to shift by the hour, that’s simply not good enough.
Our platform was built to change that. With a microservices architecture running on Kubernetes and underpinned by CI/CD pipelines, we’ve created a system that evolves continuously, whether in the cloud or on-premises. Software can be upgraded or patched quickly, without unforeseen impact on the end-users. So you’re always up to date, secure, and ready to take advantage of the latest features as soon as they’re available. That’s real agility.
This is how software should behave in 2025 – built for controlled, frequent, low-risk change on your terms. Not quite Netflix (this is airport ops, after all), but certainly a lifetime away from the rigid and slow-moving ERP-type systems of the last decade or two.
And it’s already making a difference. That major European airport group saw a performance leap overnight once it shifted to our CI/CD pipelines. As a result, their month-end reconciliation is faster. A large Australian airport is seeing similar gains with its AODB, helping it stay in tune with increasingly stringent regulatory audit and security requirements. Their operations teams are also less reactive and more proactive.
Reimagining the AODB. Not replacing It
People often ask if we’re replacing the Airport Operational Database (AODB). We’re not. We’re evolving it, building on insights from over 140 airport customers. The AODB has long been the airport’s operational heartbeat, but it wasn’t designed for real-time data, dynamic collaboration, or the agility today’s operations demand.
So we re-architected it. We designed our entire platform around manage by exception principles and an event driven operating concept. And we’re now connecting our core processes to customers’ integration so that every flight update, delay, or gate change can become a live signal, instantly available to any connected service or stakeholder. As a self-confessed sports mad fan, I’d put it this way: it’s the difference between watching the replay and being at the match, play by play, in real time.
Multi-cloud, multi-region, always on
Airport operations don’t stop. Neither should the platforms running them. We’re fully global, with 24/7 operations teams, offices in nearly every continent, and we run live operational systems across major cloud providers AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud – and regional private providers like Asergo too. In fact, our platform is pushing up to a terabit of data per hour through the cloud.
Why does this matter? It means airports no longer need to compromise between speed, compliance, and resilience. If you want to deploy in your region to meet data sovereignty requirements, you can. If you want a hybrid setup combining an on-prem AODB with cloud forecasting, or a cloud resource planning tool, we support that too.
It’s not just a tech Stack, it’s a mindset shift
When I speak with airport CIOs and CTOs, I hear the same thing: “We want to modernize, but we can’t afford the risk of ripping everything out.” That’s exactly why we didn’t build a monolithic solution. Instead, we designed a platform you can adopt piece by piece, at your own pace. Want to start with aeronautical billing? Of course you can. Need smarter resource planning that works with your current AODB? Absolutely. Then layer in predictive insights, like passenger show-up profiles or off block time forecasts, to go even further. (You should: Auckland Airport found machine learning off-block predictions were 20% more accurate than manually entered estimates, helping them sharpen their stand planning and turnaround processes).
That’s also why CI/CD and microservices matter so much. They let you improve gradually, without stopping the operation. Just like the airport itself, always moving, always adapting.
Results that matter to the bottom line
It’s easy to get lost in architecture diagrams, AI buzzwords, and the endless debate of OpEx versus CapEx. But what really matters is what our customers can do now, that they couldn’t do before.
They’re resolving billing discrepancies in minutes, not days. They’re adjusting stand allocations based on forecasted inbound delays. They’re spotting passenger flow bottlenecks before they form, not after the complaints roll in. This is what it means to run a predictable, proactive airport, not just an efficient one.
And don’t forget. These gains compound over time. The more data that flows through the system, the smarter the predictions get. The more modules you connect, the more coordinated your decisions become.
Looking ahead: Total Airport Management
Our goal isn’t just to improve the status quo. It’s to help airports achieve Total Airport Management, a world where every resource, every team and every passenger interaction is connected and informed by real-time intelligence.
We’re already putting this into action. The work is well underway, from AI models that predict congestion to tools that optimise check-in resources and automate seasonal gate allocation. And we’re continually refining these systems to make them more accurate, improving our machine learning models to not only respond to disruption but learn from it to help avoid the next one. The foundation is built, and it’s built to scale.
Final thought
We didn’t set out to create another airport software system. We set out to build a more efficient, predictive and collaborative way of running airports. And that starts with giving operations teams the tools they need to adapt, respond, and lead with confidence.
I deeply believe that technology should serve the people running these complex environments, not the other way around. If we’ve done our job right, our platform will fade into the background and let airport teams do what they do best: keep the world moving.
I’m proud of what our team has built, but even prouder when I see how it is helping airports work smarter. And if the performance gains we’re seeing are any indication, we’re only getting started.
