The core of Southwest’s reservations systems dates back to a system developed by Braniff International called “Cowboy”.  It is nearly 50 years old and Southwest bought it from Braniff in the 1980’s and just kept patching things onto it.

As a low cost strategy for an airline in the 1980s or 1990s, that made sense.  The problem is that the 1990s started more than 20 years ago. 

Southwest has been severely impacted in code share relationships as well as international flying as a result of their antiquated system.  They began investigation of a replacement system after they began to realize their inability to codeshare in a North American pact between themselves, WestJet and Volaris.  That work was put on hold coinciding with the Airtran merger announcement. 

Now, Southwest has already figured out it can use the Airtran system to facilitate international flying for the interim.  In fact, Southwest has *added* international flights to the Airtran network while removing domestic flights (to be replaced by Southwest flights) at the same time.  As an interim solution, that works.

But over the next 2 years, we’ll see Southwest evaporate Airtran domestically and that may leave a tiny international airline in place (Airtran) to help with international flying.  The problem is, they’re no closer to being able to integrate with Airtran’s reservations system than they are with any other airline.

Cobbling together systems and doing things low cost is fine and even the right thing to do in many ways today.  However, it is *not* the way to handle reservations for an airline that the 10th largest in the world (by traffic) and which has a fleet of nearly 700 aircraft and almost a 100 destinations.  It isn’t the way to handle reservations for an airline that is now consistently *missing* revenue opportunities with partner airlines such as Volaris.  In fact, Southwest was actually kind of good in pioneering codeshares with other quirky airlines and making it work.  Now, not so much.

So why is Southwest willing to invest Billions (with a “B”) on buying new aircraft from Boeing but not into a reservations system that it really needed now and which isn’t really being looked at for anytime in the near future?  

I think there are 2 main reasons.  First, the Airtran merger which is occupying a vast amount of resources and will be doing so for the next 2 years.  Southwest quite rightly recognizes that it has an exceptionally big task to complete in this area and that losing focus could cost them.  They’ll innovate as much as they can in the meantime but that job is just way bigger for way more people in the organization. 

Second, a new reservations system is scary.  Many have tried to build them, very few have ever succeeded.  Much of what exists out there today is fairly antiquated.  American Airlines has reportedly had monumental problems with the new system being designed for it by HP, for instance.   There is a reason why several airlines have migrated from half baked systems to SABRE, for instance.  Two of those have been Virgin America and jetBlue.   I suspect that Southwest looks at that landscape littered with failures and half successes and doesn’t relish the job.  I wouldn’t.

So what’s the solution?  I would try to figure out if the Airtran system could be scaled up to Southwest’s needs.   That’s the Navitaire Open Skies system that many have left.  The alternative is to bite the bullet and build an IT infrastructure around SABRE (or a similar legacy reservations system.)  The options are limited until someone builds a new, modern reservations system that works.  SABRE is one choice but other legacy systems such as Worldspan and Galileo still exist.  

My point is that no one has built a new, ground up system for airlines capable of handling all the needs of a major airline in the world in decades.  All systems are systems conceived of in the late 1960s or early 1970s which have been patched, added to and migrated over the years.   Anything remotely new is inadequate to the scope and scale that these same huge airlines operate from. 

Oddly enough, I think that Southwest would be wise to find a partner in this system.  It’s an airline that prefers it’s own ways, yes, but sharing that risk with other major airlines would be a wise move today, tomorrow and a decade from now.

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