Southwest Partners with AWS to Expand AI Capabilities
Southwest Airlines partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to transition its technology infrastructure to a fully cloud-based system by 2028, leveraging AI tools like Amazon Quick and Kiro to accelerate modernization and improve operations. The airline aims to enhance customer experience, operational efficiency, and software development workflows for its 134 million annual travelers through this initiative.
Southwest Airlines has announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to overhaul its technology infrastructure, shifting from on-premises systems to a cloud-based environment by 2028. The move aims to boost operational speed, flexibility, reliability, and customer service across the airline’s operations, which support over 70,000 employees and 134 million travelers annually. The collaboration will integrate AI and agent-based technologies, including AWS’s Amazon Quick, to streamline processes in customer experience, operations, and software development. Southwest plans to deploy AI agents across these functions to drive innovation and efficiency, aligning with its customer-focused strategy. A key component of the modernization is the use of Kiro, AWS’s agentic coding service, to refactor legacy code and accelerate updates to Southwest.com, the airline’s largest customer-facing platform. Historically reliant on on-premises systems, the website’s modernization has been slowed by complex workflows. Kiro is now enabling over 2,700 developers to automate testing, generate cloud infrastructure, and build new features, reducing tasks that once took hours to minutes. Southwest is also adopting an AI-driven software development model called the AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AIDLC), where AI agents assist throughout development while engineering teams retain oversight. The airline’s Chief Information Officer, Lauren Woods, emphasized that this transition aligns with Southwest’s long-standing focus on performance, efficiency, and reliability, extending that mindset to its technology infrastructure. AWS Vice President Swami Sivasubramanian highlighted the partnership’s potential, stating that Southwest’s use of agentic AI capabilities delivers measurable results at scale. The initiative marks one of Southwest’s most significant technology modernization efforts, positioning the airline to improve operational performance and customer experience in the coming years.
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