From Spreadsheets to Automation in Revenue Management

Flair Airlines: Canada’s Most Affordable Airline

Flair Airlines is a Canadian LCC founded in 2005, operating a fleet of 20 Boeing 737 aircraft and serving approximately 5 million passengers. With a point-to-point business model, Flair connects major Canadian cities with popular destinations in the US, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

The revenue management team at Flair Airlines consists of five analysts, with four specifically dedicated to revenue management operations. These specialists are responsible for maximizing revenue across the airline's entire network while handling all pricing decisions. Their work is critical to Flair's financial performance as they continuously analyze market conditions to optimize fares and inventory across all routes.

We spoke with Jean-Loup Senski, Director of Revenue Management and Sales at Flair Airlines, to understand how CAYZN has transformed their revenue management operations and helped them achieve remarkable results.

The Challenge: Manual Processes Limiting Operational Efficiency

Before implementing CAYZN, Flair didn't have a dedicated revenue management system and relied on their PSS and Excel spreadsheets. With a team of four analysts focused on maximizing revenue and pricing across their entire network, they needed a more efficient solution to optimize their revenue.

The key areas where their previous revenue management approach fell short:

• Manual Processes: Analysts were required to manually update inventory, adjust pricing, and monitor performance across their network without automated tools or intelligent forecasting capabilities. The process was time-consuming, prone to human error, and made it difficult to respond quickly to market changes.
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• Resource Constraints: With a team of four revenue management analysts, Flair Airlines faced challenges managing revenue across their network. The team had to monitor multiple markets simultaneously, making it difficult to respond quickly to market changes or identify all revenue opportunities. Without automated tools, they struggled to allocate their limited human resources efficiently, often focusing on only the most pressing tasks while leaving potential revenue improvements unexplored.
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• Limited Optimization: Without a dedicated revenue management system, Flair Airlines’ manual approach made it impossible to implement sophisticated forecasting models or dynamic pricing strategies that could respond to market conditions in real-time.
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• Reaction vs. Strategy: Prior to CAYZN, analysts spent the majority of their time identifying and addressing most pressing tasks at hand, leaving little opportunity to develop long-term strategic approaches. This reactive stance made it difficult to anticipate market trends or capitalize on revenue opportunities before competitors, ultimately limiting their ability to maximize total revenue across their network.
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• Untapped Revenue Potential: Lack of a dedicated RMS to make changes and identify revenue opportunities meant potential revenue was being left on the table. Without automated tools to detect market trends or pricing opportunities, the airline was unable to fully capitalize on fluctuating demand patterns or competitor pricing changes.

The Solution: Levelling Up From Manual Processes to Intelligent Automation

When selecting a Revenue Management System, Jean-Loup wasn't just looking for the best current solution, but one that would continue to evolve and improve over time.

"My focus was not what is the best revenue management system now, it's what will be the best revenue management system in the long run."

Flair Airlines’ decision was based on several other key factors that aligned with their business needs as a low-cost carrier:

• Holistic revenue approach: Unlike systems that only optimize passenger revenue, CAYZN also allows to balance between maximizing load factor and optimizing average fare, giving flexibility to adjust one’s strategy based on specific routes, seasons, or market conditions.
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• Ease-of-use: The intuitive interface but in particular also the Business Rules Engine (BRE) enables quick setup and customization without requiring extensive IT expertise.
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• 24/7 automated operations: Continuous monitoring and adjustment capabilities via the BRE ensure revenue management never stops, even outside of business hours.
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• Forward-looking technology: Advanced features like the ancillary module provide future-proof capabilities that will keep the low-cost carrier competitive in the long run. With CAYZN's regular updates based on customer feedback, the system continuously improves to meet clients evolving needs.

"The strategic advantage, I would say, is that it's tailor-made for LCC in my opinion. It's not like all the other revenue management systems that are focusing on PRASM and just optimizing passenger revenue.”

^{PRASM (Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile), KM Equivalent: PRASK (Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Kilometer;
PRASK = PRASM/1.6)}

Tailor-Made, 24/7 Revenue Optimization for LCCs

For Jean-Loup CAYZN’s greatest strength lies in its holistic approach to revenue management, which goes beyond the typical focus on increasing passenger revenue found in most other systems. CAYZN allows operators to balance between maximizing load factor and optimizing average fare, giving flexibility to adjust one’s strategy based on specific routes, seasons, or market conditions.

"The biggest value I see with CAYZN is its ability to look at total revenue. A lot of the revenue management systems are only focusing on passenger revenue. With CAYZN, we're able to either optimize the load factor or the average fare, or both."

This flexibility gives Flair a strategic advantage as a low-cost carrier, allowing them to tailor their revenue management approach to different market conditions and business objectives.

“As a low-cost carrier, we need tools that help us stay nimble and strategic at the same time. CAYZN lets us tailor our approach by market and by moment—it’s built for how LCCs really operate.”

What makes this possible on a daily basis is CAYZN’s automation. Jean-Loup highlighted the platform’s Business Rules Engine (BRE) as a key enabler of round-the-clock revenue management.

"The business rules are really easy to set up, they're easy to customize, and I think that's really one of the biggest values I would see in CAYZN. These automated processes help us to do revenue management 24/7, which obviously before, we didn't have."

With this always-on capability, Flair can act on demand trends in real time. This capability is particularly advantageous in scenarios like surge in bookings over a long weekend, need to simulate demand on underperforming routes, etc. CAYZN ensures the revenue strategy never sleeps, even when the team has to.

75% Measurable Productivity Gain for Flair Airlines

The implementation of CAYZN has transformed Flair's revenue management operations. Rather than spending hours on manual inventory adjustments, the team now dedicates their time to strategic analysis and data-driven decision making.

This shift from tactical adjustments to strategic oversight has delivered remarkable productivity improvements:

"The time that my team is spending on making these changes in terms of inventory has been reduced by, I would say, at least 70%. Now they are much more focused on the analysis part and understanding the trends, instead of just changing the inventory that actually can be done through automation that we've done with CAYZN."

Now, analysts arrive each morning to review a dashboard of outliers identified by CAYZN, thanks to its alert system, which continuously monitors every flight in the network and automatically flags instances of spillage (turning away customers due to capacity constraints) or spoilage (unused capacity).

This change in workflow didn't just make things simpler, it made them faster. The team spends far less time clicking through systems and far more time making informed decisions.

That kind of shift has a real, measurable impact on day-to-day operations.

"We gain easily 75% of productivity with CAYZN."

These productivity gains have translated into impressive performance metrics. While Jean-Loup cannot attribute their success entirely to CAYZN, he acknowledges its significant contribution to Flair's strong performance in 2024:

"We've achieved approximately 90% in terms of load factor for 2024 and we had TRASM growth of 25% year over year. I can't attribute this 100% to CAYZN, but there is a big factor that CAYZN has contributed to these performances in 2024."

3-Month Rapid Implementation Followed by Immediate Results

The implementation of CAYZN at Flair Airlines was remarkably efficient, taking approximately three months from start to finish. What impressed Jean-Loup most was how quickly they began seeing results.

"After just two weeks of usage, we could already gain this productivity that we didn't have before.”

The onboarding phase involved close collaboration between Flair's IT department and CAYZN's Implementation team to ensure proper integration between their systems. During this period, they worked extensively with the product team to build dashboards and business rules while receiving comprehensive training and support. Jean-Loup emphasized that the partnership didn't end after implementation:

"There is not only this onboarding phase where Wiremind is working with us, but this collaboration continues also afterwards on the long term, and in this case, every week."

Future-Proof Technology Driving Continuous Improvement

Wiremind offers ongoing partnership that extends well beyond the initial implementation and onboarding process. This continuous collaboration ensures clients like Flair Airlines receive consistent support, product updates, and strategic guidance throughout their journey with CAYZN.

The relationship evolves from implementation to true partnership, with regular check-ins and collaborative problem-solving that helps airlines maximize the value of their revenue management system over the long term.

Beyond day-to-day support, Wiremind fosters a strong user community. Through live webinars, feature briefings, and dedicated user groups, Flair has the chance to connect with other CAYZN customers to share ideas, surface challenges, and shape the future of the platform.

"Thank you again for organizing this event. I've rarely experienced client events with this level of professionalism and quality."

This open dialogue and collaborative environment are part of what Jean-Loup values most—particularly CAYZN’s continuous development and expanding capabilities:

"CAYZN when we started and CAYZN now has definitely changed — there's been a lot of improvements and it continues; there are constantly sprints ongoing, getting our feedback and putting this into practice."

Jean-Loup is particularly excited about exploring CAYZN's continuous pricing algorithm and ancillary module in the near future, seeing these as critical to staying ahead in the competitive airline industry.

Key Features of CAYZN for Flair Airlines

• RM Module: Primary interface of CAYZN for a complete overview of the airline’s portfolio.
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• Business Rules: Low-code rule editor offering more than 1000 variables, helping Flair Airlines run automated, easy-to-setup and customizable actions. This enables the airline to run revenue management 24/7 without requiring extensive IT expertise.
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• Alerts: Automated identification of outliers, spillage, and spoilage flights that require attention.
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• Extract Module: Powerful data export capabilities that allow Flair to integrate with their Power BI dashboards for deeper analysis.
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• Optimizer: Advanced algorithms that optimize revenue across the entire network, balancing load factor and average fare to maximize total revenue.

After four months of using CAYZN's Optimizer module and a year with the core platform, Flair Airlines has transformed its revenue management operations. With greater efficiency, better decision-making, and improved financial results, Jean-Loup and his team are strategically positioned to maximize revenue across their expanding network of destinations.