Scaling AI Through Data Fluency

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Summary

Aer Lingus redirected a significant portion of its IT spend to build a solid data foundation, prioritizing governance and quality over “shiny” competitor trends.

Data literacy is treated as a core business skill with the airline investing in a custom curriculum and top-down encouragement to empower citizen developers.

Real-time insights are transforming high-stakes operations, such as optimizing flight loads and pricing and operations decision making.

Aviation is one of the most data-intensive industries on the planet. Every flight generates a torrent of information: fuel consumption, engine telemetry, passenger preferences, real-time weather patterns and more. For Aer Lingus, Ireland’s flagship carrier, this complexity is compounded by a storied history. Many airlines still operate on systems built decades ago, where data is trapped in departmental silos. In this environment, making simple decisions can require manual data extraction and weeks of analysis. Dave O’Donovan, Chief Digital, Data & Transformation Officer, Aer Lingus, is leading this charge. Under his leadership, Aer Lingus has undergone a radical shift, redirecting a significant portion of its capital spend away from traditional IT maintenance and toward a unified platform powered by Databricks. I sat down with Dave to discuss the mechanics of this transformation. We explored how Aer Lingus is moving past legacy to a fully digitally led customer experience, and why he believes the secret to AI success is data literacy. Shifting infrastructure spend to the data foundation Aly McGue: Aer Lingus is 90 years old. That is an incredible milestone, but it also comes with the challenge of legacy systems and processes. How are you framing the company's mission today in the context of a rapidly evolving digital landscape? Dave O’Donovan: It’s a fascinating time for us. Aer Lingus is Ireland’s window to the world. We have a massive short-haul network across Europe, and we’re actually the second-largest European carrier on the North Atlantic by US destinations served. But being 90 years old means we have systems and mindsets that have matured over decades. Our mission now is to maintain that famous “warm welcome” and caring brand identity while meeting the expectations of a traveler who is more digitally savvy than ever and wants premium experiences. That forces us to ask: How do we offer a self-service, digital-first experience that still feels like Aer Lingus? The answer, invariably, is data. Aly: You’ve made a very bold move recently by redirecting a sizeable percentage of your IT and change spend specifically toward data. What led to that “all-in” moment? Dave: It was a collective decision at the management committee level about 18 months ago. We reached a point where we realized that understanding how to leverage AI is no longer a “nice to have.” For years, many companies, including airlines, could get away with under-utilizing their data. But the pace of AI evolution has been like gasoline on a fire. We decided that instead of chasing every new “shiny thing” our competitors announced, we would stop and lay the foundations. We’ve spent the last year and a half focused on the platform, governance, data quality and, most importantly, data literacy. If you don't have those solid foundations, any AI you build is just a house of cards. Aly : Many organizations struggle with the transition from legacy data warehouses to a modern architecture. How did your starting point at Aer Lingus influence your choice to go with Databricks? Dave: Strangely, we felt lucky that we were a bit slower to move than some of our peers. We hadn't made massive investments in the “first wave” of cloud data tools, so we didn't have to worry about writing off recent sunk costs. We still had many legacy on-premises warehouses. When we looked at the market, it had matured. It was clear that Databricks offered a “soup to nuts” solution. We could go all-in on a single lakehouse architecture. What really clinched it for me wasn't just the feedback from our data engineers — who loved the performance — but the vision for democratizing data. I’m excited about things like Databricks' data warehousing platform and Databricks Genie . These tools allow business users to ask questions of the data in plain English. That is the only way to truly scale. Eliminating the legacy IT bottleneck Aly: You mentioned the “bottleneck” of legacy systems. If you could snap your fingers and remove one obstacle between your data and a final decision, what would it be? Dave: It would be the physical extraction of data from systems that are “60 years young,” as we like to say. These legacy systems are fantastic at what they were built to do — running an airline safely — but they weren't built for the age of generative AI. We need to move from a world where a department says, “This is my data, I own it,” to a world where data is a shared, holistic asset used to improve the entire operation. Aly: Let’s talk about that human element. You’ve invested heavily in a “Data Literacy Academy.” Why is that such a priority for an airline executive? Dave: Because tools are only half the battle. You can have the best LLM or the fastest compute in the world, but if your teams don't have the intuition or the skills to use them, you’ve gained nothing. We partnered with a UK-based group to build a custom curriculum. We’ve done everything: online training, in-person workshops, and even recording our own podcasts. But even with all that, you have to push it every single day. It has to be top-down. Our CEO is constantly encouraging teams to think about data literacy. We try to provide “bite-sized” chunks of information that people can use in their day jobs immediately. My goal is that, in five years, “citizen developers” will be the norm at Aer Lingus. If we still have a situation where a business leader doesn't know how to exploit data to run their department, then I’ve failed in my role. The competitive advantage of real-time insights Aly: In an industry like aviation, “real-time” is a requirement. Where are you seeing the biggest impact of real-time insights today? Dave: The Operation Control Center (OCC) is the heart of the airline. About 24 hours out from a flight, the variables start moving fast: weather patterns change, crew availability shifts and aircraft maintenance…