Southwest Partners With Amazon After the Colossal Mess in 2022

Who could forget the Southwest Airlines meltdown of December 2022? Between all the sickness that was swirling around, winter storms and an overpacked flight schedule, the chaos that ensued resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and major headaches for holiday travelers. Hoping to get back into the good graces of its customers, Southwest announced it has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help the airline manage and process dat“AWS’s proven experience in the travel industry, coupled with our vast portfolio of cloud technologies, empowers Southwest to increase operational resiliency, drive cost efficiency and deliver exceptional experiences for its employees and customers,” Matt German, vice president of AWS, told Travel + Leisure.

Michael B. Jordan and “SNL” Brought News From Southwest Airlines

The Waffle House reference was a nice touch

Southwest is hoping that the partnership will improve their reliability. They’ll be using the AWS platform for ticket booking, optimizing flight operations, customer interactions and even crew scheduling. The new tools will also allow Southwest’s IT and Data Science teams to try new technological advances and quickly make changes to their systems.

Southwest isn’t the first travel company to partner with Amazon. United Airlines, Expedia and Korean Air all use the AWS platform. Hopefully this will help curb some of Southwest’s woes as we enter a very busy summer travel season.

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Amanda Gabriele

Amanda is InsideHook’s Senior Editor and has been writing about food, drinks, travel and style for 16 years. She’s written for Travel + Leisure, Eater, Gear Patrol and New York Magazine among other outlets.