From PDFs and spreadsheets to one trusted register of every aircraft
Asterias gives airlines, aircraft lessors and insurers one secure place to manage aircraft, their insurance and their claims. SoftwareYard provides the platform's technical lead and full-stack engineer. We took full ownership of an existing codebase and its cloud infrastructure, rebuilt the product around a single register of aircraft and engines, and built an artificial-intelligence pipeline that reads insurance certificates and turns them into checked, structured data. All of it runs under ISO 27001 information-security controls.
The Challenge
Aviation insurance still runs on PDFs, email and spreadsheets. Every aircraft, engine and high-value component carries insurance certificates, policies, leases and maintenance records, held by different parties: the airline, its lessors, insurers and brokers. Asterias began as a claims-handling (loss adjustment) platform. To serve a major airline it had to become the single source of truth for every asset. It also had to read incoming documents automatically and keep each party's commercial data private from the others, without lowering the bar set by its ISO 27001 certification. SoftwareYard had to take over a large, established codebase and its cloud estate and keep delivering while the product changed direction.
What We Did
- 1
Took ownership.
Mapped the codebase, the cloud infrastructure and its costs. Documented the architecture and reviewed security against ISO 27001 controls.
- 2
Rebuilt the product around the asset.
Designed an asset register where each aircraft, engine and component is identified by its serial number and keeps a history that is only ever added to. Insurance, leasing, maintenance and claims attach to the asset as sections, so new lines of business fit without a rewrite.
- 3
Automated document intake.
Built a pipeline that classifies each uploaded document, converts it to text inside the secure boundary, reads it with artificial intelligence and matches it to the right aircraft and policies. Reviewers see the extracted fields beside the original document. A reading goes through automatically only when every field matches existing data; anything uncertain becomes a draft for a person to approve.
- 4
Protected commercial data.
Added fine-grained access control, so lessors and insurers see only the assets and periods they are entitled to. Enterprise customers sign in through their own identity provider.
- 5
Automated delivery.
Every approved change is tested, versioned, packaged and deployed to the development environment automatically, with code-owner approval gates. All infrastructure is defined as code, so environments can be torn down and rebuilt on demand.
- 6
Cut cloud waste.
Reviewed the Amazon Web Services architecture, found unused and oversized resources, and set out a plan to scale them down.
The Outcome
Asterias now has a platform built around the asset rather than the claim. It reads insurance certificates automatically and keeps a person in the loop wherever the reading is uncertain. Releases are repeatable and auditable, and the infrastructure can be rebuilt from code. That foundation supports its multi-year contract with a major airline and its growth into further modules: maintenance, dashboards, an application programming interface for partners, and a portal for external stakeholders.