Southwest Airlines’ international flying takes off, powered by Amadeus Altéa technology

Southwest began selling seats on the inaugural international flights in January via the Altéa Reservation and Inventory modules. The first flight departed from Baltimore, Maryland, USA for Aruba today at 8:30am ET, with customer handling and load management powered by Altéa Departure Control . This marks the culmination of two years of behind-the-scenes IT collaboration and systems re-engineering between our teams.

Working together

The implementation of the full Altéa IT suite has been a global effort, as the execution and ongoing support of Southwest is being served from around the world and around the clock by Amadeus employees in Dallas, Boston, Miami, Sydney, Bangkok, London, Nice (France), Erding (Germany) and Bangalore.

The commencement of international flying by Southwest follows the announcement in May that Southwest and Amadeus entered into a joint contract for our full Altéa suite to support the carrier’s U.S. domestic flying as well. Over the next few years, we will work together to move the Southwest fully to the Amadeus Altéa platform for both international and domestic flying. Currently we provide services via Altéa to more than 120 airlines around the world.

We are wholly committed to helping all of our customers deliver the products and services that connect, serve and manage the evolving needs of the 21st Century traveler. At the same time, North America is a key strategic market for our growth, and we are very proud to be a partner of Southwest in the significant milestone of international flying, as we shape the future of travel together .

For more details on this milestone – have a look at the full press release here .