Twilio SendGrid supports the largest aviation infrastructure in Japan

All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. (ANA) is one of Japan’s leading airlines. It has the largest domestic network of any airline in Japan, and its international network extends across the entire world, including Asia, Europe, and the United States. The airline industry is always going up against nature, which makes delays and cancellations unavoidable. ANA’s email program, which is powered by Twilio SendGrid, notifies passengers of flight information in the event of a flight irregularity. 

Searching for an Email Delivery Service Scalable to Next-Generation Architecture

Prior to adopting Twilio SendGrid for its email program, ANA operated a similar service to deliver flight irregularity email notifications. The previous system was adequate and had no major problems. 

So why did they make the switch to SendGrid?

Yusuke Nakamura, from ANA’s Digital Channel Team in the Service Platform Department of the Digital Transformation Office, explains the company’s decision. 

“ANA is committed to continually improving customer experience. We aim to increase the value of our customers’ experiences in a variety of situations, from booking tickets, airport counters, waiting to board, in-flight service, flight transfers, and services at the destination. One of these initiatives is the expansion of information-sharing channels for flight irregularities. Whether information about cancellation or delays is conveyed in a timely and polite manner has a major impact on customer experience. When flight irregularities occur, we must ensure information is delivered reliably via the customer’s preferred channel. It was difficult to adapt our previous system to the increasing variety of channels. We needed to completely change our system architecture to make it more scalable for the future.”

Sending Large-scale Email Instantaneously 

Mr. Nakamura reflects on ANA’s motivations. 

“Our first goal was to add SMS messaging and ANA app push notifications for flight irregularities. To do this, we needed to build an API-based system that included traditional email delivery. For example, when an airport is closed due to a major incident, the number of flight irregularity emails that must be sent can number in the hundreds of thousands. We were looking for a system that could handle these short-term spikes, and Twilio SendGrid was the ideal choice.” 

“We decided to implement Twilio SendGrid due to its high service level, comprehensive support structure and global adoption track record, as well as its ability to support increased scale. It was also great timing that SendGrid integrated with Twilio and the company was expanding its activities in the Japanese corporate market.” 

An Easy-to-Use Service for Both Developers and Users 

“Twilio SendGrid has public API documentation and extensive references. Because of these resources, development took around three to four months and progressed smoothly. The UI is very simple to use—it’s easy to view performance reports and check operation status. A major benefit of Twilio SendGrid is that it allows us to track why a user didn’t receive an email, enabling us to more easily determine how to improve deliverability. Using the Subuser feature, you can quickly create and manage segmented subuser groups. The ability to add new services quickly, without affecting the core service of flight irregularity notifications, will lead to easier feature expansion in the future” says Yusuke Nakamura.

“During the development stage we had challenges with IP warmup, but after discussing the issues with Twilio SendGrid’s deliverability experts, we were able to get up and running with no problems. We’ve built a reliable relationship with Twilio’s team. They have always been very supportive, helping us find the best way to grow our services.” 

Leveraging Twilio’s Flexible Scalability 

Rie Toma, of the Digital Channel Team in the Service Platform Department of the Digital Transformation Office, explains what’s next for ANA.