AEGEAN Airlines: Strengthening eRetail Transformation with Project Delivery & Technical Governance

AEGEAN Airlines is Greece's largest airline, operating a fleet of 83 aircraft and serving 162 destinations across 47 countries. As a member of the Star Alliance, AEGEAN has been recognised as the Best Regional Airline in Europe by the Skytrax World Airline Awards for 13 consecutive years. The airline remains committed to innovation and excellence in customer service, continually expanding its network and enhancing its offerings.

AEGEAN sets out to modernise its retail platform to provide a personalised and seamless customer experience, while reducing TCO and increasing solution flexibility. Following an extensive assessment of various modernisation options, AEGEAN selects the more complex and challenging route of developing a proprietary, custom-built solution tailored to its business needs.

This choice brings several key challenges:

• Lack of In-House Expertise in Technical and Project Oversight – AEGEAN does not have the internal capabilities to define and enforce enterprise-grade technical delivery at this scale. The chosen development partner, while long-standing and competitively priced, also lacks the required depth of large-scale governance experience.

• High Risk of Compromised Quality and Unpredictable Outcomes – Without strong governance, flexibility in the build could lead to weak change control and quality assurance, resulting in scope drift, delays, budget overruns, and potential security vulnerabilities. AEGEAN recognises this risk early and takes steps to address it.

• High Risk of Inadequate Risk Management and Stakeholder Misalignment – Neither AEGEAN nor the development partner is positioned to independently design and enforce the necessary risk management processes or stakeholder alignment structures. Without these, fragmented communication and misalignment could undermine delivery.

To address these, AEGEAN engages Portaltech Reply to provide comprehensive project delivery and technical governance advisory.

Our team works closely with AEGEAN to design and implement governance frameworks for their new eRetail solution, drawing on Portaltech Reply’s 20+ years of expertise in large-scale enterprise software delivery. These frameworks are built on pragmatic and actionable delivery methods, proven design templates, and risk-reduction strategies for complex, enterprise-grade projects.

The governance approach includes:

• Clear delivery methodologies and estimation techniques.

• Disciplined change control processes.

• A Technical Governance Framework with an Architectural Review Board (ARB) to validate design quality and maintainability.

• Standardised communication protocols to align all vendors and stakeholders.

Throughout the engagement, we maintain continuous collaboration with AEGEAN and all other involved vendors to ensure processes, standards, and controls are not only defined but also embedded into day-to-day delivery.

While the project is still in progress, the adoption of robust governance frameworks is already establishing a strong foundation for successful delivery. Based on results from similar large-scale greenfield software projects, we expect to see measurable benefits such as:

• Proactive Risk Mitigation and Management – Standardised risk protocols enabling earlier issue detection and resolution, reducing the likelihood of high-severity defects after go-live.

• Enhanced Project Predictability – Formalised delivery methods improving schedule and scope adherence.

• Improved Solution Quality and Maintainability – Enterprise-grade coding standards and architectural reviews preventing costly rework and technical debt.

• Streamlined Collaboration – Defined engagement models reducing miscommunication and missed deadlines.

• Optimised Technical Design and Cost Efficiency – Reuse of enterprise components to avoid unnecessary custom development and reduce costs.