The glitchy events that have cropped up at Southwest Airlines since its migration to the Amadeus Altéa system have all been addressed as they arise, a carrier spokeswoman said.
There have been “a handful of brief events” since the May 2017 transition, the last in November. An Amadeus issue that affected all its Altéa users occurred on Nov. 27; the following day, Southwest experienced intermittent slowness with mobile check-in, unrelated to the previous day’s problems.
At the same time, Southwest had a broken link embedded in some customer emails that was not allowing them to check in via the link, although they could by going directly to the site.
“All issues have now been resolved,” the spokeswoman said. “We haven’t seen any of these issues reoccur.”
She noted that each event was different with different factors and no single cause.
A recent article in the Dallas Morning News said Southwest’s president was “leaning on Amadeus” to fix the issues.
Amadeus declined to comment on this occasion.
The Madrid-based technology company has prided itself on performing near-flawless migrations to Altéa, which is used by more than 130 airlines. It is the largest provider of passenger services systems (PSS) in the world.
Typically, a PSS includes reservations, inventory control and departure control systems, although an airline may use just one or two components.
Southwest, however, may have presented some unique issues. Its incumbent system was based on Braniff Airways’ old Cowboy system and upgraded periodically by Sabre.
Braniff shut down in 1982. Southwest grew up with a system that could not handle code-sharing, baggage fees, modern revenue management or other post-deregulation innovations.
Southwest is also the largest carrier of domestic passengers in the US.
“It is not surprising that we are working through a few items that inevitably ‘shake out’ from a project this large,” the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
“We are working through those items with Amadeus, and they are as motivated as we are to see better performance from this system. Some of that work is in improving support structures, our processes, a little change management and continued team development."
She added that the quick recovery from these events has been “encouraging,” and most issues have been very limited in scope.