The WinOps Case Study: Helvetic Airways
How a Swiss E-Jet operator and WinOps have grown together since 2004 - from digital fuel tracking to a fully integrated operations platform. As featured in Aircraft IT Operations (Q3 2026).
Customer Profile
Helvetic Airways is a premier Swiss regional airline, renowned for precision and reliability. Its modern, eco-friendly fleet of 20 Embraer E-Jets (E190, E195, E190-E2 and E195-E2) is one of the largest fleets for short- and medium-haul regional flying in Europe.
Beyond its own scheduled and charter services, Helvetic is a major wet-lease partner for Swiss International Air Lines, providing high-quality aircraft and crew - an ACMI operating model that places particular demands on systems, data flows and compliance.
Two Companies That Grew Up Together
For some twenty years, Helvetic and WinOps have been in almost daily contact - not a classic vendor-customer relationship, but a joint search for the best way forward. Sometimes Helvetic wants one thing, WinOps suggests another, and what gets implemented is a third idea they develop together.
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2004
Four Fokker 100s, One Digital Idea
Helvetic starts operations with four Fokker 100 aircraft and wants to track fuel figures digitally, not on paper. The collaboration begins.
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2008
EU-OPS 1 Makes It Serious
New flight time limitations demand a digital solution. WinOps delivers it cloud-based: an online platform with no local installations - and direct access for crews.
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2008–2024
Module by Module
Whenever Helvetic hits a pain point that needs an IT solution, the answer is not a new vendor - it is building the capability into the existing platform.
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Today
Almost Everything on WinOps
From crew planning and control to training content, employee management and the paperless EFB - most of Helvetic's operation runs on one WinOps platform.
Pain Points That Paper and Point Solutions Couldn't Handle
Over the years, Helvetic faced a series of operational challenges that manual processes and standalone tools could not solve.
Flight Time Limitations
Tracking EU-OPS 1 flight and duty limits for every crew member was impossible without a dedicated system - and needed proper alerting, not just records.
Disconnected Training
Even the big training systems are not integrated with crew planning and crew control, leaving a gap between qualifications and rostering.
Standalone EFB
An early adopter of the paperless cockpit, Helvetic needed the EFB integrated into the Flight Ops platform - not yet another isolated system.
ACMI Data Flows
Flying for other operators means depending on their data. Connecting a separate system for every partner does not scale.
App Sprawl in the Cockpit
Twelve years of building Engine Failure Procedures had left pilots navigating eight different apps.
Build It Into the Platform
Instead of shopping the market for point solutions, Helvetic builds each capability into WinOps - and today uses almost everything the platform offers.
Crew Planning, Control & Travel
Rostering, day-of-ops control and crew travel run on one data set, with alerting that tracks almost every limitation an airline operation needs.
Explore module →
Fully Integrated Training
The training module - including training content - feeds pilot qualifications, checks and expiries directly into crew planning and crew control.
Explore module →
EFB & ECB on One Platform
The paperless cockpit is directly integrated with Flight Ops - and the Electronic Cabin Bag brings seating and passenger data to cabin crew.
Explore module →
HR & Employee Management
WinOps is Helvetic's HR backbone. With passport data in the ops system, General Declarations generate automatically - and even the load sheet runs on the platform.
Explore the product →Alerts Across the Operation
Airport categorization flows into sales: sell a flight to an uncategorized or Cat C airport, and the salesperson is warned before it happens.
Explore module →REDiFly Tech Log, Fully Integrated
The electronic tech log is not connected by a loose interface - it is completely integrated and, visually, part of the same platform.
Explore integrations →Why One Platform Beats Twenty Interfaces
For CTO Christian Suhner, the value of a single integrated system goes beyond the users. Maintaining the infrastructure behind one platform is more efficient, updates are managed centrally by WinOps, and security is simpler when everything lives inside one protected environment - especially with passenger data in play.
As soon as data leaves through interfaces, it is distributed - and a little bit of control is lost with it.
One Point of Entry
As an ACMI operator, Helvetic receives its partners' flight data through a single entry point - instead of connecting twenty systems.
Updates That Propagate
When WinOps changes one module, the change is reflected across all others - no tracking of update impacts through separate systems and interfaces.
Data That Stays Inside
One platform to protect, with everything kept within it - less distributed data, more control.
Eight Apps Become One
Engine Failure Procedures that had grown into eight pilot apps now live on one platform - presented in a useful, effective and efficient way.
A Partnership That Includes Consulting
The way Helvetic and WinOps work together shapes the product for every operator - with Dispatch, Training and Flight Ops all involved in developing the solution in one place.
Weekly Meetings, Free Consulting
New WinOps customers are accompanied with weekly meetings that go beyond the software - sharing process experience from across the WinOps operator community.
A Community That Builds Together
Functionality developed with one airline becomes available to the whole WinOps user community - operators helping each other get to the perfect level.
Compliance Without Extra Cost
Compliance findings at Helvetic were solved with WinOps' help, without additional cost - that is how airline and vendor grow together.
Documented and Trained
WinOps has invested heavily in manuals and courses that teach users how to work with the platform - a head start for every new operator.
AI, Built on Data That Is Already in One Place
Helvetic has already implemented a lot of AI and is now exploring the capabilities further together with WinOps. The biggest AI blocker at most operators - data scattered across systems - does not exist when the operation runs on one platform.
Your AI, Your Choice
WinOps lets each operator select the AI they want to use - including an on-premises module for airlines that do not want to share data.
Only Tested AI Ships
WinOps publishes AI features only once they are tested and proven - because in airline operations, "probably works" is not good enough.
A Year of Training in One Click
Planning is highly complex - holidays, functions, upgrades. Drawing on real airline data, WinOps AI produces a whole year's training plan, content included, in one click.
A Win-Win, Twenty Years On
“It’s a win-win for us because we don’t need a big IT department but we can give feedback to WinOps, then test and introduce changes quickly; and help with developing solutions. That’s what makes it so successful.”
“The advantage of working with a partner airline rather than treating them as a separate entity, is that you can make your software, your processes, more efficient when you get such close feedback from the airline.”
This case study is based on the article “A strong partnership for Helvetic” published in Aircraft IT Operations (V15, Q3 2026), in which Christian Suhner and Michael Anklin share how the partnership was built and how it works. The original article is available as a PDF download.
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