Southwest Airlines has announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and modernise its technology infrastructure. By 2028, the airline plans to transition from its current on-premises systems to a cloud-based, AI-enabled architecture on AWS, aiming to improve speed, flexibility, and reliability across its operations.

The collaboration will see Southwest leveraging AWS's advanced tools to streamline its technology environment, which supports over 70,000 employees and numerous daily operations. Lauren Woods, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Southwest Airlines, highlighted the importance of this transition, stating, "From Customer experience to operations to how we build the systems behind it—all of it is coming together in a way that helps our Teams move faster, make better decisions, and deliver for our Customers."

A key component of this modernisation is the use of Kiro, AWS's agentic coding service, which Southwest is employing to update its critical customer-facing platform, Southwest.com. This initiative aims to refactor legacy code, significantly speeding up the modernisation process. Kiro is currently utilised by over 2,700 developers to automate testing and generate cloud infrastructure, reducing tasks from hours to minutes.

Additionally, Southwest is adopting an AI-driven development lifecycle, which integrates intelligent software development workflows. This approach allows AI agents to assist in development whilst engineering teams maintain oversight and responsibility for outcomes.

This partnership underscores Southwest's commitment to innovation and customer-centric service, with the potential to transform its operations and enhance the travel experience for its 134 million annual passengers

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