Tech Talk: The most complex industry deserves the simplest software

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Airlines run on 30-year-old legacy systems, with interfaces that require weeks of training. Sometimes, the workarounds built on the platforms are so complex that you need an entire team to manage them. 

At CitizenPlane when airlines use our systems, we want them to feel that it just makes sense. This approach is a design constraint that shapes every product decision.

Simplicity as a product design and conviction

Software that is not built around simplicity will, sooner or later, embrace the complexity of the industry it serves. In this case, the more complex the industry, the more complex the software.

There is a reason da Vinci called simplicity the “ultimate sophistication”. In a system as complex as aviation, making something feel simple means placing simplicity at the center of every design decision, until the user feels a sense of effortless clarity, where every interaction seems evident and the whole experience flows without friction.

As we develop our cloud-based Operating System for airlines, we always keep simplicity in mind. Here is the result: a turnkey platform that handles inventory management, pricing, distribution, retailing, and the full passenger journey in a single consistent flow. Our goal is to become the Shopify of aviation, offering a complete and coherent experience, designed from the ground up to feel obvious.

Bridging two worlds

Part of what makes this vision difficult is that aviation is not starting from a blank page. The existing ecosystem with GDS distribution, interlining, and PNR management, will remain in place in the upcoming years. If we ignore this, we’ll probably be creating a great disruptive product, but any airline using it will need huge IT workarounds to ensure continuity of all operations. So in the end, our simple product might end up as the most complicated in the market.

So, our answer is to build a bridge rather than a replacement. The acquisition of TTI, a company with deep roots in airline technology, gave us the ability to speak fluently in both languages: the legacy infrastructure that airlines depend on today, and the new Offers and Orders standard that IATA is driving towards. 

We think that airlines should not have to choose between modern retailing and compatibility with the existing ecosystem, that’s why we make both work together and we build towards the most simple software to make the complex bridge painless to our airlines.

We wouldn't ship something we wouldn't use ourselves

There is a discipline behind CitizenPlane's product quality that goes beyond good intentions. The support teams who manage day-to-day operations use the exact same application as the customers they work with. 

We are the first users of everything we build, so whenever a flow has unnecessary friction, we feel it ourselves before any customer does. That’s how we ensure that the standard of quality is never abstract.

Technology that earns trust

Airlines need to feel confident in their software stack. I’m an Apple fan, so I want airlines to trust our systems the same way we trust our iPhones and iMacs to support our productivity every day. That trust is built through consistency, reliability, resulting in a quiet confidence in a product that never surprises you in the wrong way.

In an industry where few minutes of downtime have damaging operational consequences, that level of trust demands more than good design. It demands a robust infrastructure with rigorous automatic processes, and a team that sees everything they ship as a long-term commitment. Shipping is only the beginning. You ship, then you follow, maintain and grow what you built.

This is what CitizenPlane means by simplicity. More than a design choice, it is a deep, structural refusal to make airlines carry complexity that the software should be carrying for them.

The most complex industry in the world deserves software that makes it feel simple, and that’s what we build.