Southwest Selects Amazon for Digital Overhaul Initiative

DALLAS – Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has announced that Southwest Airlines (WN) has chosen AWS as its preferred cloud provider for its digital transformation initiative.

This move towards large-scale modernization with AWS is part of the airline's long-term strategy to improve the passenger experience, streamline operations, and effectively allocate resources to its IT infrastructure.

Southwest Airlines is carrying out a comprehensive digital overhaul and plans to harness AWS as a development platform to deliver automated, scalable, and secure solutions. These improvements, which range from fare shopping to arrival at their final destination, come months after a major technological breakdown disrupted the airline's operations in December 2022.

The Dallas-based airline aims to avoid such future incidents by implementing AWS storage, container, and serverless computing services to optimize operational applications that support gate assignments, ground operations, flight operations, and aircraft maintenance.

Technology Upgrades

As part of this overhaul, the airline will utilize Amazon Redshift, a cloud data warehouse, to create a modernized data architecture that provides real-time and predictive insights to analysts, data scientists, and business users across the entire organization.

Southwest recently built a secure system that gathers and stores pricing and flight shopping data using AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which offers cost-effective storage classes.

Utilizing AWS’s availability and reliability, the new system was able to handle the scale and processing needed to offer competitive fare recommendations to customers across partner and WN digital properties.

Southwest Airlines also intends to utilize AWS' machine learning and analytics to accelerate the development and release of digital innovations that better serve customers throughout their travel journey.

Do you think the airline selection of AWS will help it avoid another meltdown come summer travel season? Be sure to leave your comments on our social media channels.

Featured image: N738CB Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-7H4 KLAS LAS. Photo: Nick Sheeder/Airways

https://airwaysmag.com/southwest-airlines-holiday-meltdown/