Southwest Gets Cloud Help From Amazon After Mass Flight Grounding

After a wave of flight cancellations last year, Southwest Airlines is seeking Amazon’s assistance.

The tech giant announced Wednesday (March 8) that Southwest had chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its cloud provider to assist the airline’s digital transformation.

“Southwest uses their website and app to directly reach passengers, resulting in more than 83% of revenue coming from these channels,” AWS said in a news release.

“Using AWS, the airline will harness the automatic scaling capabilities of cloud technology to more efficiently process real-time fare searches on its website and mobile app. This helps customers easily and securely find and book fares quickly, even during periods of peak traffic.”

Southwest came under fire earlier this year after technical troubles and a winter storm grounded thousands of flights during the busy holiday travel season. The airline was forced to cancel most of its flights between Christmas and just after the New Year.

A public letter sent New Year’s Day by the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) union blamed the company’s outdated technology and lack of investment in digital innovations.

“Herb Kelleher once said that his greatest mistake was not embracing and investing in technology,” the SWAPA letter said. “This was a prescient warning to his successor, but it was one that his successor chose to essentially ignore for 20 years.”

“How did we go from the most stable and profitable airline in history to the greatest meltdown in airline history?” the letter went on to ask. “Systemwide meltdowns at Southwest Airlines have been increasing in frequency and magnitude over the past 15 years.”

This particular meltdown impacted millions of passengers, is expected to cost Southwest more than $1 billion, and led to apologetic company executives testifying before Congress.

“Let me be clear. We messed up,” Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Waterson said during a Senate committee hearing last month. “In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operations resiliency.”

Now, the company is hoping AWS can help it optimize its flight operations, with the release saying the airline “plans to utilize the full power of AWS as a development platform to deliver automated, scalable, and secure solutions.”

That means setting up an updated data architecture that uses Redshift, Amazon’s cloud data warehouse, to deliver analytics capabilities “to gain real-time and predictive insights across its entire operations.”