How to scale your airline when the technology doesn't follow

This is the first article in a series on why mid-tier airlines are the most overlooked opportunity in aviation, and what CitizenPlane is building to change that.

When I co-founded CitizenPlane in 2017, I started meeting more and more airline professionals. We talked about their operations, and every time, they would share a new story about how they are being delayed in a project because their technology doesn’t support it, or how they are struggling with a specific feature because of the very way their software is designed.

The biggest carriers tell me about their hyper-personalised stacks and massive workarounds handled by dedicated teams. The smaller ones tell me that their resources cannot bear the workarounds they need. So they end up being slowed down by their own systems.

Mid-tier airlines collectively carry over one billion passengers a year. They don’t have any tech partner who builds solutions specifically tailored to them.

An industry that digitised first, and got stuck

Airlines are, for the most part, running 2026 operations on systems built in the 1990s. And they all experience a gap between what they want to do and what their tools actually allow.

Aviation was one of the first industries to go digital. Global Distribution Systems were built in the 1960s. Passenger Service Systems followed in the decades after. At the time, they were the best enterprise software on the market.

The problem is that the architecture of those original systems is not fit for today’s world. The interfaces require weeks of training, and every change requires a ticket and absurdly long wait. When you’re not a large carrier with significant IT teams, the costly licence fees add up to the opportunity cost of features unavailable in your PSS.

Why nobody entered this market

You would expect this situation to have attracted competition, newcomers with fresh and agile technology. But it hasn’t for two reasons. First, the barriers to entry are high. A PSS handles reservations, inventory, ticketing, check-in, departure control. Getting it right, and ensuring interoperability across NDC standards, IATA requirements, interline agreements and GDS connectivity, takes years and significant investment before a single airline goes live.

Second because airlines themselves are locked in. Aviation is a highly regulated industry. Airlines must comply with government compliance requirements and data transmission, and every technical interconnection between systems must meet strict security and certification standards. As a result, commercial cycles are long, because partnerships involve months of legal, procurement, and integration work before any transaction takes place. The switching cost is high, and the contracts are designed to discourage exit. Over time, most airlines have also layered system upon system, patching gaps with custom solutions to the point of no return, with a stack that is deeply interconnected, poorly documented, and impossible to touch without risk. And the risk of a migration, with disconnected operations, compliance gaps, and revenue exposure during the transition, often feels higher than the cost of staying put.

On the tech provider side, the result is a dead-end. The biggest players don't prioritise mid-tier airlines because the economics don't compel them to. New entrants don't enter because the market obstacles are too high. And the airlines in the middle get systems that were never built for their needs.

I've had airline CEOs tell me that their tier-one provider doesn't even answer their emails. This describes the reality: when you are not part of the top-tier, even though you run complex operations, you are not the customer these vendors were built for.

What the market actually looks like

Many mid-tier airlines are concentrated in Africa and Southeast Asia, markets growing faster than the global average, with carriers launching new routes faster than their technology can keep up. 

When we launched CitizenPlane, we began on the distribution side. What we found, working closely with those airlines, was that distribution was one symptom of a deeper problem: the data layer underneath was fragmented. Inventory lived in one system, pricing in another, booking management in a third. Each had been procured separately, from different vendors, and the connection was not smooth. All together, they formed a stack nobody fully controlled.

That observation drove everything that followed. We acquired Zenith PSS in 2024, then Pulse RM in 2026, all connected on a shared data layer rather than as separate modules bolted together. An airline can start with one module and expand when ready, the shared data layer ensures full control over the system.

Why there is a window opening on airline tech

The technical barrier to building in this space, while still real, is lower than it was a decade ago. Cloud infrastructure, modern API standards, the shift from GDS-centric to NDC and Offer-and-Order models create openings that didn't exist before.

A small team can today build software with the reliability, security, and depth that would have required hundreds of engineers a decade ago. And it is now possible to build it at a price point that works for mid-tier airlines.

The airlines themselves are getting more ready. Airline executives who grew up using consumer software, booking holidays on their phones, managing businesses on modern SaaS tools, now look at their operational technology and see the contrast clearly. They want to become real retailers. They want to offer new services, adjust prices dynamically, respond to market conditions without waiting months for a development cycle.

The window is open, now is the time to move. Reach out to discuss further!

Next article looks at why the timing matters now specifically, and what the airlines that move in the next two years will be able to do. Stay tuned!

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