How we Helped Jetstar Airways Save Over $130K AUD/Year on AWS Without Downtime
⚡ TL;DR:
Jetstar Airways was spending over $480,000 AUD/year on AWS infrastructure across multiple workloads — including web, booking APIs, CI/CD, and data services. we was brought in to audit their cloud usage, reduce unnecessary spend, and improve visibility. In less than 5 weeks, we uncovered and helped eliminate over $11,000/month in waste — all without compromising performance, security, or redundancy.
🧩 The Context
Jetstar operates in a high-throughput, low-margin industry — with mission-critical infrastructure powering online bookings, mobile check-ins, internal APIs, and real-time operational dashboards.
The cloud stack, built over time by multiple vendor teams, included:
Dozens of microservices across ECS + Lambda
CI/CD via GitHub Actions + CodePipeline
Data pipelines using Athena, Glue, and Redshift
Global S3 + CloudFront distribution
Despite a modern stack, leadership had limited visibility into where AWS spend was going. The infra team suspected waste, but hadn’t prioritized cloud cost optimization yet — fearing the risk of service disruption.
🔍 What we Found
Over a 2-week discovery + access review, we identified critical savings opportunities:
🛑 $4,200/mo in unused EC2 capacity reserved years prior and no longer used (dev/test)
🛑 $3,100/mo in underutilized RDS clusters for low-traffic internal tools
🛑 $1,800/mo in S3 Glacier + standard storage holding redundant log archives
🛑 $1,200/mo in CloudFront invalidation overuse + outdated routing rules
🛑 Cwe runners and Lambda concurrency caps set far beyond observed usage
No production services were affected — this was entirely recoverable cost with no business risk.
🔧 What we Did
Over a 3-week optimization sprint:
🧼 Decommissioned 20+ stale EC2 and EBS volumes across three regions
🪙 Moved long-term S3 archives to Deep Archive with lifecycle rules
⚙️ Refactored RDS + Aurora autoscaling policies to fit actual IOPS and traffic
📊 Built a FinOps dashboard using AWS Cost Explorer + custom tagging strategy
🧪 Implemented Cwe runner auto-termination logic for idle workflows
📉 Audited CloudFront distribution to reduce cache misses and origin requests
💥 The Result
| Cost Area | Before | After | Monthly Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| EC2 & EBS | $12,800 AUD | $8,600 AUD | $4,200 AUD |
| RDS & Aurora | $9,400 AUD | $6,300 AUD | $3,100 AUD |
| S3 | $4,900 AUD | $3,100 AUD | $1,800 AUD |
| CloudFront + CI/CD | $3,800 AUD | $2,600 AUD | $1,200 AUD |
✅ Total Savings: ~$11,000 AUD/month
✅ Annualized Impact: $132,000 AUD/year
✅ Zero downtime or service impact
✅ 100% observable and tagged infrastructure
📈 Strategic Outcomes
This project gave Jetstar:
Clear cloud cost accountability across engineering and finance
Repeatable workflows for dev/test teardown and Cwe runner cleanup
A path toward automated resource lifecycle policies
Confidence to engage in deeper cloud-native modernization (next phase)
It also equipped internal teams to track costs proactively, not reactively.
💬 Client Quote
“We’d suspected we were overspending, but hadn’t prioritized it. [Your Name] delivered clear, actionable results — without interrupting any production work. We recouped his fee within the first 30 days.”
— Cloud Services Manager, Jetstar Airways
🚀 Could You Benefit From a Similar Audit?
If you’re running multi-region workloads, CI/CD pipelines, and data infra — but haven’t done a cloud audit in over a year — you’re probably overspending.
we offer a no-risk Cloud Infra & Cost Audit, including:
Discovery of low-hanging savings
Tagging + visibility strategy
A roadmap for both short- and long-term optimization