The other thing that’s happened in the last 3 years specifically, the project has been re-prioritized. But it did have a project together to try to figure out what to do in the future. Despite the fact that there was a mounting problem with being able to handle everything, Southwest stayed the course. You have to sit back and re-evaulate.Īnd so Southwest did re-evaluate, but it kept coming to the decision to continue modifying this patchwork of a reservation system to make it do what it wanted to do. We looked at, well, we need to think about our boarding, think about new products, think about codeshares, think about international, think about having the ability to do complicated fare rules, stays, and all that. As Bob explained:Īs we started to evolve our business model, we really put our first big strategic plan together in ’06. But as Southwest became more complicated, so did the reservation system. It was effectively a customized reservation system, one that Braniff agents probably wouldn’t recognize today. Southwest was a simple airline and as the major user of the SAAS system, it could make any changes it wanted as long as it wanted to invest the time and effort. When Braniff died, Southwest ended up carrying the torch on a version of that reservation system, so yes, it’s old and it’s not built to handle an airline in today’s industry.īob explained that while it’s problematic today, for the longest time it was perfect for Southwest. After some insane route expansion after deregulation and a whole host of other issues, Braniff collapsed in May 1982. Now, Braniff was an airline that had style but absolutely no network planning abilities. This system actually evolved from the old Braniff Cowboy system. At Media Day last week, I sat with Bob Jordan, EVP Strategy and Planning at Southwest, to better understand why this was taking so friggin’ long.īut first, how about a little history? Southwest’s reservation system is known as SAAS. Despite these issues having been raised for years and year, we’re still at least three years away from a new system coming online. International flying and codesharing are the big two that have been publicly discussed lately, but there are more things that can’t be done because of its ancient system. For years we’ve heard Southwest talk about how its reservation system was preventing the airline from doing all sorts of things.
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