07 June 2024

easyJet is one of the largest low-cost, European point-to-point airlines on the planet. The company operates 336 aircraft across 34 countries and 156 different airports. Reliability is everything in the airline segment, which is why the IT operations teams abide by a proactive approach in monitoring its complex hybrid networks, taking extra steps to keep flights running smoothly.

The warmest welcome in the sky
easyJet is an extremely busy eCommerce and retail business that wants to deliver ‘the warmest welcome in the sky’ by providing excellent travel experiences at a reasonable cost.

“On top of selling the seats, we need to operate the flight,” said Simon Challis, senior technology manager for platform design at easyJet. “The resilience of the airline and our network is critical to ensure we are flying all our customers on time where they need to be.”

One thing that differentiates easyJet from other carriers is its operations as a point-to-point carrier. This transportation model means its aircraft fly from one base to another rather than always going through a central hub.

As the company’s routes have expanded and its ability to handle thousands of flights per day has grown, so has its network of bases. easyJet relies on bases to store aircraft, and crew members report to or sleep at them overnight. These bases can be seasonal, and the airline must be able to spin them up quickly based on demand. In the past, easyJet connected its bases to the network using traditional MPLS links, which can take up to 90 days to provision.

Embracing SD-WAN
When a customer books a flight, there is a concurrent behind-the-scenes process where the airline schedules crew and aircraft. On top of that, airlines have a responsibility to submit reports of who is traveling where to agencies and authorities. Some airlines are having a tough time keeping up with so many intricacies. Additionally, outdated systems and network outages can add to the difficulties by leading to cancelled flights.

“With how our network works, any small disruption to our operation can have a knock-on effect,” said Challis. “It’s vital that we assure our services from the very get-go.”
As the airline moves to the cloud, easyJet’s IT team is not looking to own physical assets or networks but instead wants to provision as much of its infrastructure as possible. As a result, the company has leveraged the public internet and Direct Internet Access (DIA). It is also moving away from its reliance on data centres towards the cloud.

The airline is embracing WAN modernisation as it transforms its network infrastructure from MPLS to SD-WAN and moves many of its applications and services into the cloud. easyJet wanted visibility into how provider networks were routing their applications, how they performed, and the quality of those connections. They also wanted to measure the latency of connections between anything that remains within the data centre and anything that moves through AWS. Since the apps manage such core business functions, easyJet recognised there were challenges in indiscriminately relying on DIA or the cloud provider’s fabric when migrating applications into the cloud.

“We want to make sure that the services we provide meet the SLAs that we’re given,” said Challis.

Faster access, better monitoring
easyJet’s applications sit at the core of its business; customers use the apps to book flights or check; airport operations use them to check bags and order planes; and crew members use them to manage tickets and process payments.

During easyJet’s transformation, the airline has relied on Cisco AppDynamics for application performance management (APM) to ensure that its customers can make and manage bookings through all its commercial entities. easyJet wanted a better understanding of how its customers and employees were experiencing its apps from their perspective. The airline turned to ThousandEyes to strengthen cloud and internet visibility and improve the monitoring of digital experience from the customer and employee standpoint.

Since its implementation, ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents and Cloud Agents have given easyJet a holistic view of how the applications perform for customers and employees. ThousandEyes helped the company understand what is happening across its estate, which has been valuable for preventative maintenance and cost optimisation.

The company has deployed ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents into its Cisco devices and virtual machines. Combined with its upgraded SD-WAN and cloud architecture, easyJet now has more flexibility and spends less time setting up network connectivity at bases. For instance, when easyJet realises that the fault resides outside its network with a provider, it can conserve engineering resources otherwise spent on troubleshooting.

“We’ve been able to reduce our mean time to respond to a number of incidents by going to ThousandEyes in the first instance to actually find out where those faults lie,” said Challis. “

Faster access also means better monitoring of these core systems — enabling easyJet to fortify its competitive advantage and flexibility, making it a point-to-point airline better prepared for growth.