Built to Take Off: Efficient Airline Operations with SAP Solutions

In the high-stakes world of aviation, operational precision and profitability are non-negotiable. While your SAP ERP system provides a powerful foundation, the unique complexities of airline operations—volatile fuel costs, dynamic pricing models, interline agreements, and a web of global suppliers—demand more than standard functionality.

This is where the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) becomes a game-changer. SAP BTP enables the rapid development of custom, intelligent solutions that integrate seamlessly with your ERP—bridging critical gaps, enhancing decision-making, and driving measurable impact across operations.

These are not off-the-shelf modules, but purpose-built applications that address your airline’s specific challenges—with the speed, scalability, and intelligence needed to stay ahead.

Let's explore key use cases where custom solutions on SAP BTP can revolutionize your operations:

1. Cost Optimization: Turning Real-Time Insights into Operational Savings

Airlines operate on razor-thin margins, and traditional financial reporting is rarely enough for real-time, proactive cost control. While SAP ERP ensures financial discipline, airlines need specialized tools to capture granular insights and drive intelligent, automated actions. With SAP BTP, you can build custom solutions that extend SAP’s capabilities and unlock new savings across high-cost operational areas.

Use Case: Real-time Fuel Hedging & Consumption Optimization

The challenge: Fuel remains one of the most volatile and significant cost drivers. Standard SAP often reports fuel usage retrospectively, limiting the ability to take timely hedging or operational action.

The SAP BTP advantage:

• Real-Time Data Integration: Connect global fuel market feeds, weather forecasts, SAP PM data, and flight plans into a single BTP application.
• AI/ML-Powered Predictions: Use SAP AI Core and AI Services to model future fuel prices and recommend hedging strategies—ideal contract types, timing, and percentages.
• Anomaly Detection: Continuously monitor actual vs. planned fuel consumption by aircraft, route, and weather, and flag inefficiencies.
• ERP Integration: Push recommendations and alerts directly to SAP for timely procurement planning and financial adjustments.

Business impact: Reduced fuel waste, smarter hedging decisions, optimized fuel loads per flight, and significant cost savings.

Use Case: Intelligent Crew Rostering to Minimize Overtime and Disruptions

The challenge: Crew scheduling is governed by strict rules and real-world chaos—delays, sick calls, union mandates, and more. Standard SAP HR lacks the intelligence to optimize these dynamically.

BTP Custom Solution:

• Advanced Optimization Engine: Build custom models on BTP using Kyma runtime or proprietary algorithms to process variables like crew qualifications, flight hours, legal rest, union rules, base location, and live disruptions.
• Predictive Hotspot Detection: Use historical and live data to predict crew availability and identify upcoming overtime risks.
• Real-Time Re-Rostering: In the event of cancellations or delays, BTP can instantly propose revised, compliant rosters for SAP HR to review and activate.
• Seamless Integration: Push final rosters into SAP HCM/SuccessFactors and time management systems for accurate payroll processing.

Business impact: Reduced crew-related overtime costs, higher compliance, greater agility, and better workforce satisfaction.

2. Revenue Management: Maximizing Yield from Every Seat and Segment

Airlines operate in hyper-dynamic markets where customer demand, competitor pricing, and operational constraints shift by the minute. While SAP ERP handles the core of sales and inventory, maximizing revenue today requires a far more intelligent and responsive system. With SAP BTP, you can layer custom solutions that bring precision, personalization, and automation to the forefront of your revenue strategy.

Use Case: Hyper-Dynamic Pricing & Offer Management

The challenge: Traditional revenue management systems update prices periodically and miss out on real-time shifts in customer behavior, market demand, or competitor moves—leaving potential revenue on the table.

BTP Custom Solution:

• Real-Time Data Fusion: Integrate live market feeds—competitor fares, search demand, social sentiment—with historical booking patterns from SAP CRM and current inventory from SAP ERP.
• AI-Driven Price Optimization: Use BTP’s AI/ML capabilities to dynamically assess price elasticity and willingness to pay, tailoring seat prices per segment in real time.
• Hyper-Personalized Offers: Analyze customer profiles and past behavior to generate custom bundles—seat upgrades, add-ons, or loyalty benefits—that maximize ancillary sales.
• System-Wide Distribution: Push optimized fares and offers instantly to GDS, airline websites, and mobile booking platforms.

Business impact: Higher average revenue per passenger, better load factor management, rapid response to demand shifts, and improved monetization through personalization.

Use Case: Interline Settlement Optimization & Fraud Detection

The challenge: Interline ticketing involves multi-carrier journeys, complex fare sharing, and huge volumes of reconciliations. Standard SAP covers part of the process, but fraud risks and billing inefficiencies still persist.

BTP Custom Solution:

• Automated Reconciliation: Ingest and reconcile large interline datasets—like IATA SIS files—against booking and flight operations data in SAP.
• Anomaly Detection with AI: Identify inconsistencies, phantom bookings, or irregular patterns using ML-based fraud detection models.
• Dispute Resolution Workflow: Deploy a custom BTP workflow to automate and track partner airline dispute handling.
• ERP Integration: Automatically post receivables, payables, and adjustments into SAP FI/CO, ensuring clean financial records.

Business impact: Minimized revenue leakage, faster settlements, significant reduction in manual effort, and stronger fraud prevention mechanisms.

3. Billing & Payments to Suppliers: Streamlining Complex Financial Workflows

With thousands of suppliers across services like ground handling, catering, maintenance, and fuel, airline payment operations are inherently complex. Contracts vary, service levels fluctuate, and invoice accuracy is mission-critical. While SAP offers foundational controls, advanced automation and intelligence—enabled through SAP BTP—are the key to driving scale, speed, and compliance.

Use Case: AI-Driven Contract Compliance and Invoice Matching

The challenge: Complex service contracts often include variable rates, SLAs, and usage-based pricing—making manual invoice verification slow, error-prone, and costly. Standard SAP MM helps, but struggles with high-complexity contracts at scale.

BTP Custom Solution:

• Smart Contract Repository: Use BTP to store and manage supplier contracts. NLP services extract key clauses, rates, and SLAs for structured use.
• Service Delivery Verification: Integrate data from SAP PM, ground operations, and maintenance logs to auto-verify actual services rendered.
• AI-Based Matching Engine: Automate multi-point invoice validation—cross-checking contracts, purchase orders, and service data with invoices, flagging mismatches in real time.
• Exception Workflow Automation: Route flagged discrepancies to appropriate teams for swift resolution, minimizing processing delays.
• SAP Integration: Seamlessly push validated invoices into SAP Ariba or SAP S/4HANA Finance for payment processing.

Business impact: Fewer payment errors, faster invoice cycles, stronger supplier trust, and tighter compliance—without increasing overhead.

Use Case: Dynamic Payment Term Optimization

The challenge: Balancing early payment discounts with the need to conserve cash is a constant treasury tradeoff. Doing it manually limits optimization potential.

BTP Custom Solution:

• Unified Data Visibility: Pull in real-time cash positions from SAP FI/CO, projected revenue data, and outstanding supplier invoices with term details.
• AI-Led Payment Scheduling: BTP algorithms analyze the data to recommend which invoices to pay early (to capture discounts) and which to defer.
• ERP Workflow Integration: Feed optimized payment schedules directly into SAP Cash Management and Accounts Payable modules.

Business impact: Improved working capital, maximized early payment savings, and more agile treasury operations with minimal manual intervention.

SAP BTP: The Engine Powering Custom Innovation in Aviation

The advanced solutions outlined above are all made possible by the depth and versatility of SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). Designed for extensibility, intelligence, and scale, BTP empowers airlines to build high-impact applications—fast, securely, and without disrupting their core ERP.

Here’s what makes BTP indispensable to modern airline transformation:

• Agile Development, Zero Disruption: Rapidly build and deploy custom apps without impacting your existing SAP S/4HANA or ECC environments.
• Seamless SAP Integration: Native connectors ensure custom solutions sync effortlessly with core SAP modules—reusing business logic, data models, and security protocols.
• Built to Scale with the Cloud: Architected on cloud-native principles, BTP solutions can scale with operational complexity and seasonal fluctuations.
• A Full-Stack Innovation Platform: Unlock advanced capabilities to power your next-gen airline solutions:
  • AI & Machine Learning: For predictive insights, real-time decision-making, and automation
  • Data & Analytics: Via SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere for centralized intelligence
  • Integration Tools: To connect SAP and non-SAP systems for unified operations
  • Application Development: Low-code tools (SAP Build) and pro-code environments for tailored app development
  • Automation Services: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and workflow management for seamless process orchestration
  • Enterprise-Grade Security & Compliance: Built-in governance ensures your applications and data meet the highest standards of airline data security and regulatory compliance.

Why Custom Airline Solutions on SAP BTP?

While SAP ERP provides a solid operational foundation, the airline industry demands more—more agility, more intelligence, and more precision. Here’s where custom solutions on SAP BTP deliver distinct strategic value:

• Solve Industry-Specific Challenges: Address complex airline scenarios—like fuel hedging, dynamic pricing, crew optimization, and interline billing—that generic tools can’t fully handle.
• Gain a Competitive Edge: Leverage tailored applications that align with your unique business model and differentiate your services in a crowded market.
• Extend and Maximize Your SAP Investment: Add targeted, high-impact functionality on top of your existing SAP systems—without overhauling the core.
• Accelerate Innovation: Rapidly prototype and deploy new ideas, using AI, automation, and low-code development tools built into BTP.
• Future-Proof Operations: Build a flexible, scalable architecture that evolves with the pace of technology and market change.

Conclusion: From Complexity to Clarity—With BTP as Your Innovation Runway

Operational excellence in aviation isn’t just about systems—it’s about how intelligently those systems adapt to your unique reality. SAP BTP gives you the power to bridge gaps, automate decisions, and optimize every corner of your operation.

Whether you’re looking to reduce costs, unlock new revenue streams, or streamline supplier payments, we’re here to help you design and deliver custom BTP solutions that align to your strategic goals.

Let’s partner to bring your transformation vision to life—and help your airline fly higher, faster, and smarter.