Southwest Airlines announced that in May they would beginning a major modernization of their reservation system. This is huge in more ways than one. For starters, Southwest is investing $800 million in this upgrade. That’s the largest technology upgrade in Southwest’s ~45 year lifetime!
Southwest’s Reservation System Upgrade
Southwest established a agreement to use Amadeus Altea reservation system first in 2014, when they leverage Amadeus for international routes. Since then, Southwest has been making its way toward shifting all reservations to Amadeus, making the final push, as it were in May 2017.
For those flying in May, you may receive a travel advisory like the one included below:
Initially, Southwest stated that the switch would be “mostly invisible to travelers” but they seem to warning us all the same. They are also increasing call center staff to support the transition.
As we’ve learned. IT is Hard, so if you’re flying Southwest in May, please be aware of the migration, and be mindful of it. Inevitably something will go wrong, and you don’t want to be the one that is left to try to pick up the pieces.
Are you flying Southwest in May? Have you experienced any differences?
As of Yesterday there were issues with people receiving double confirmations as the system was upgrading it appears to have generated duplicates. It did not really impact travel, just confused people.
I had an issue with my companion last week where auto-fill put my initial instead in when adding her to my flight. We had called a week prior to the flight to confirm the reservation was still active, and I even called when I encountered adding her passport number to the reservation. Both times no one mentioned anything about a middle initial anywhere and didn’t see anything online indicating there were a typo.
Flight was at 6:25 AM, we arrived at the airport at 4:50 AM, and took the gate agent almost an hour on the phone to remedy the situation which was just to cancel the companion ticket and reissue. I wondered how long it would have taken me to cancel the companion reservation and rebook on my phone.
Coming back we were ok and the checkin system seemed more fluent with the TSA Precheck being on the ticket already instead of us asking the gate agent to add it like our previous flights had.