Southwest Airlines Case study

Essay by munaverUniversity, Master's March 2005

download word file, 2 pages 2.0

1. Strategic direction of Southwest airlines:

Southwest Airlines practices unconventional approach to its overall operations in order to make is the most profitable airlines. Its online reservation system does not rely on agents or other third parties to do the reservation rather its online reservation can only be done through the airline's website. This helps in saving millions of dollars in commissions to agents.

2 Causes of change in technology at Southwest Airlines:

Southwest Airlines recognized ahead of time the significant demand for internet, network and phone service that will increase productivity of business traveler. It had the AirOne system installed that used AT&T's service to provide the business traveler with phone services from the aircraft and passengers can connect their laptops to get access to internet and connect to their private office networks.

This service is consistent with Southwest's history of providing POS (positively outrageous service)

3. Financial Ability to embark on major technological program of advancement:

Southwest Airlines invests in technology to provide best possible customer service, to follow its tradition of providing POS (positively outrageous service).

4. What does the corporation's web page present about its business directive:

The airline had a vision that there will be demand for ticket less travel so it invested in an object based database management system to help build a ticket less reservation system on its homegate corporate website. Southwest Airlines became one of the first airlines' to offer 26 different types of information from its own site the Southwest Airlines homegate.

5. How will technology impact the industry?

Southwest Airlines has always played games in avoiding fees to large reservation systems, it developed a partnership with HP to develop a hybrid of mainframe and client server technology that combines a central inventory database with local schedules and dares database...