From day one, Avelo Airlines has been guided by a mission to Inspire Travel and a commitment to core values like Safety Always, Keep It Simple, Do the Right Thing, and One Crew. These principles shaped every decision as the airline built a modern, resilient IT infrastructure from the ground up.

Building a Future-Ready Foundation

When Avelo Airlines launched in April 2021—the first new U.S. airline in nearly 15 years—it faced the rare opportunity and challenge of building its IT systems from scratch. Determined to avoid the pitfalls of legacy systems, Avelo’s leadership, including former Allegiant and United Airlines executives, partnered with Hynes & Khater to execute a bold IT vision.

The core requirements for Avelo’s technology stack included:

• Cloud-first, cloud-native architecture to avoid costly and rigid data center investments.
  
  
• Scalability and flexibility, to support growth without constant overhauls.
  
  
• Event-driven data flow for efficient, responsive operations.
  
  
• Loose coupling between systems to enable fast integrations and reduce vendor lock-in.
  
  
• Future readiness to swap out core systems without disrupting operations. This approach reflected Avelo’s commitment to Keep It Simple and Do the Right Thing—building lean, efficient systems that deliver long-term value.

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The Hynes & Khater Framework: Foundation for Scalable Innovation

At the heart of Avelo’s architectural success lies the Hynes & Khater Framework —a proven, consistent, and scalable pattern for building API-centric and event-driven solutions. This framework provided the foundational blueprint for Avelo’s IT strategy, ensuring that every component of the system could communicate reliably and evolve independently. By starting with this framework, Avelo established a strong architectural baseline that emphasized modularity, reusability, and operational clarity. When combined with a cloud-first deployment model and the integration of Dapr, the full potential of the architecture was unleashed. The result: a future-ready platform capable of supporting rapid innovation, seamless integrations, and real-time responsiveness across all operational domains. This strategic combination empowered Avelo to move fast without compromising on quality or safety—delivering on its mission to Inspire Travel while staying true to its core values.

Engineering for Agility: Embracing Dapr

Hynes & Khater led the engineering team in adopting a Kubernetes-based, API-centric architecture deployed on Microsoft Azure. A standout decision was the adoption of Dapr to power an event-driven, pub-sub messaging architecture. 

Key Benefits:

• Simplified integrations: Dapr’s sidecar model enabled seamless message handling without complex middleware.
• Standardized communication: Over 76 core APIs—from reservations to HR—were unified under a clean, consistent messaging layer.
• Rapid iteration: Avelo replaced its departure control system in just two months—a feat nearly unheard of in traditional airline IT. This modular, event-driven design allowed the engineering team to act as a central hub for data and events, improving visibility and responsiveness while embodying the One Crew spirit of collaboration.

Safety and Simplicity at Scale

Today, Avelo’s architecture supports strategic priorities that keep the airline ahead of the competition:

• Rapid system swaps: Consistent messaging patterns enabled seamless transitions with minimal disruption—supporting Safety Always.
• API ecosystem agility: New vendors, like payment processors, can be onboarded with minimal engineering effort.
• Legacy modernization: Legacy systems are abstracted through APIs, allowing Avelo to retain functional value without being held back by outdated tech.
• Scalable data flow: With over 300 million API requests and 11+ million messages per month, Dapr’s pub-sub system and Kubernetes scaling ensure performance and reliability.

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Unlocking Unexpected Capabilities

While the initial goal was to streamline integrations, Dapr unlocked broader strategic advantages.

“Dapr has given us the ability to design and build service patterns that easily incorporate nosql and messaging technologies without being tightly coupled to a particular implementation.  We’ve moved from a centralized processing to distributed event-driven, rule-based processes — ensuring Crewmembers and Customers receive timely updates and improved communication.” — Robert Lamberson, Chief Architect, Hynes & Khater

For example, real-time customer notifications are now powered by event-driven messages. Whether it’s a schedule change or a voucher issuance, the system processes events, applies business rules, and sends updates via SMS or email—enhancing the customer experience and reinforcing Avelo’s mission to Inspire Travel.

Business Impact: A Platform for Growth

By embracing Dapr and a modern cloud-native architecture, Avelo Airlines achieved:

• Nimbleness at Scale: Innovating like a large airline without the bloat of legacy systems.
• Cost Efficiency: Lean cloud infrastructure supports low-cost operations.
• Operational Agility: System changes, partner integrations, and seasonal surges are handled with ease.
• Customer Experience Improvements: Real-time updates and smoother operations enhance the flying experience for over 200,000 monthly customers. Most importantly, Avelo’s infrastructure is future-proofed—ready to evolve, integrate, and scale as the airline grows. It’s an architecture built to Inspire Travel—fast, adaptable, and always ready for change.

"Dapr’s cloud-based platform is a natural fit for Avelo’s unified cloud-first strategy. It has accelerated our pace of innovation, ensured smooth scaling of operations, and provided our engineering and architecture teams with the flexibility to deliver an even better experience for our Customers.” — Avelo Airlines, Information Technology Group.

Avelo Airlines built its application infrastructure from scratch, prioritizing cloud-first, cloud-native architecture for scalability and flexibility. They adopted Dapr to power an event-driven, pub-sub messaging architecture, simplifying API standardization and integration. This enabled Avelo to quickly swap systems, onboard new vendors, and handle high API request volumes efficiently. Today, Avelo benefits from nimbleness at scale, cost efficiency compared to traditional systems, operational agility, and improved customer experiences. Dapr played a crucial role in future-proofing Avelo's infrastructure, allowing for rapid innovation and growth without costly system overhauls, giving the airline a strong competitive advantage as it pursues its low-cost strategy.

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