Integrating Jira and Leon Flight Software: Benefits for the AOC and reliable Customer Communication
- Oliver Groht
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
In an Airline Operations Center (AOC), decisions are made under intense time pressure, while customers, partners, and internal stakeholders expect fast and consistent updates.This is exactly where friction often occurs: operational data sits in Leon Flight Software, tasks and coordination happen in Jira, and day-to-day Communication is spread across email, phone, and chat. Integrating Atlassian Jira with Leon Flight Software connects these worlds—not as an “IT project”, but as a practical lever for less back-and-forth, clearer ownership, and better customer communication.
Typical bottlenecks in the AOC: where time and quality are lost
In daily operations, minutes are rarely lost due to lack of expertise. They are lost due to media breaks and unclear handovers.
Common symptoms:
Unclear ownership: who takes over - and by when?
Duplicate work: data is copied from Leon and re-entered in Jira or emails.
Different versions of the truth: AOC, Customer Service, and Sales work with different information.
Weak traceability: decisions and communication steps are hard to prove later.
In disruption scenarios, this becomes expensive: delayed or contradictory information increases effort, compensation risk, and undermines trust.
Why Jira + Leon Flight Software are a good fit
For many organizations, Leon Flight Software is the operational backbone for planning and execution. Jira is strong at structuring work: tasks, tickets, responsibilities, deadlines, and escalations.
An integration ensures that operational events from Leon arrive where teams translate them into action and communication: in Jira.
A practical target picture:
An event or relevant status change in Leon creates a Jira ticket or updates an existing one.
The ticket includes the required references (e.g., flight number, date, rotation, station) without manual research.
Progress in Jira reflects the real status (e.g., “assessed”, “approval requested”, “customer informed”).
This reduces search time and makes response times more predictable.
Benefits from the AOC perspective 1) Faster decisions—because the right data is in the ticket.
If staff do not need to jump between systems to assess a situation, follow-up questions and delays decrease. The goal is not “more information”, but a small, decision-ready set of data.
Examples of useful ticket data:
current flight/plan status
affected stations and time windows
indication of downstream effects (rotation)
2) Clear responsibilities and escalations
Jira makes operational work visible and manageable: who owns it, what deadline applies, what is the next step? Especially across shift changes, this prevents topics from falling “between the cracks”.
Typical process steps that can be mapped cleanly:
detect
assess
decide
implement
communicate
close
Escalation rules (e.g., by time or priority) help automatically push critical cases to the right level.
3) Traceability for quality, audits, and internal reporting
Organizations need to explain afterwards why a decision was made and who communicated what information and when. Jira provides a robust history. Combined with operational references from Leon, you get documentation without maintaining separate logs.
4) Fewer errors in recurring cases
Recurring situations (e.g., connection issues, handling topics, crew changes) benefit from standard procedures: same fields, same statuses, same responsibilities. This reduces errors and makes cycle times comparable.
Benefits for Customer Communications: consistent, fast, provable
Customer communication rarely fails due to lack of commitment. It fails due to missing synchronization. If the AOC and Customer Service do not share the same status, contradictory statements are almost inevitable.
An integration supports three goals:
One shared information base: everyone works with the same status and rationale.
Reliable response times: tickets steer by when which update must go out.
Proof of communication: what was communicated to whom, when, and via which channel?
Important: communication becomes part of the process, not a “side product” after the operational work is done.
Email remains reality: “Email this Issue” as a controlled bridge
Many teams still rely heavily on email—internally and externally. Jira’s “Email this Issue” function can help embed email cleanly into the workflow.
A sensible use from a management perspective:
Do not use emails as a substitute for a process, but as a documented process step.
Define in which ticket statuses emails are allowed or required (e.g., “inform customer”).
Define templates/text modules to keep statements consistent.
This way, email does not become shadow communication, but a traceable, controllable measure.
Which data flows really matter (and which do not)
For the integration to work in daily operations, clarify the business rules before the technology. Three guiding questions help.
1) Which Leon events should trigger a Jira ticket?
Not everything needs to be synchronized. Triggers should create real work, such as:
status changes that require action
plan changes with customer impact
deviations that need coordination or approvals
2) Which mandatory information does a ticket need to be actionable?
A ticket should be complete enough for teams to act without first researching:
references (flight/rotation/date/station)
affected customer group or contract (if relevant)
urgency and time window
recommended next step
3) Which feedback should flow back?
Feedback is valuable to close the loop:
“customer informed” (time, channel)
“alternative confirmed”
“approval granted”
This creates a closed loop: operational event → processing → communication → closure.
Practical example: disruption with multiple stakeholders
A flight is rescheduled at short notice. The change is recorded in Leon. A Jira ticket is created automatically with the relevant baseline data.
The ticket provides clear control:
Who assesses the situation in the AOC?
Which decision is needed by when?
When must Customer Service be informed?
As soon as the status changes to “inform customer”, a standardized message is sent via “Email this Issue” to defined contacts and documented in the ticket.
Result:
fewer follow-up questions between AOC and Customer Service
fewer contradictory statements
faster stabilization because tasks run in parallel rather than sequentially
Implementation: start small, measure impact
For mid-sized companies, pragmatic execution is key: one clear use case, a manageable workflow, and only a few mandatory fields.
Proven approach:
Select 1–2 processes that occur frequently or are costly.
Define ticket structure, responsibilities, and escalations.
Define triggers from Leon and mandatory fields.
Define communication rules (including email from Jira).
Measure after 6–8 weeks: cycle times, follow-up questions, error rate, customer satisfaction.
This creates an integration that reduces day-to-day load in a noticeable way—and can then be expanded step by step.
Conclusion: integration as a leadership tool
The combination of Jira and Leon Flight Software makes operational work in the AOC visible, manageable, and traceable—including communication. For leaders, this means:
less friction and duplicate work
clearer responsibilities
faster, more consistent customer updates
better traceability for critical decisions
When events, data fields, and communication steps are defined cleanly from a business perspective, the integration becomes a leadership tool: it reduces uncertainty, speeds up decisions, and increases reliability towards customers—without teams having to maintain “yet another tool”.
In practice, this also supports process sequence optimization: recurring cases can be standardized, responsibilities can be embedded in the workflow, and continuous optimization becomes measurable rather than anecdotal.
About Arkcanis Consulting
Arkcanis Consulting GmbH is the specialized advisory unit of the Arkcanis Group. We design scalable process and data architectures for airlines, AOCs, operators, and technology-driven organizations — with a clear focus on aviation engineering, Leon integrations, Atlassian architectures, ETL pipelines, and real-time dashboards.
As the founder of catworkx GmbH — one of the largest Atlassian partners in the DACH region — Oliver Groht brings more than 25 years of experience in Jira and Confluence architecture, process consulting, and enterprise-wide scaling. He combines this background with deep technical expertise in Leon GraphQL, data engineering, Grafana, and Flight Ops workflows.
The result: measurable, transparent, and resilient structures that enable operational excellence and strengthen strategic decision-making at the management and C-level.
