Article Review: Southwest Integrated Flight Tracking System (SWIFT)

Southwest Airlines implemented a flight management tool to help manage its flight operations data and to sustain its requirement for data management efficiency. Southwest has about 3,400 daily flights requiring status data on flight route, fuel requirements, and weather information. Thus, airplanes must be in the right place at the right time. If status from flight operations cannot be updated and retrieved, then flights can be delayed or canceled. The outcome of Southwest’s requirement was the first generation of a Southwest Integrated Flight Tracking system (SWIFT). SWIFT is a flight management tool consisting of applications for managing the fleet of aircraft and dispatching flights. Although SWIFT helped to sustain better flight operations, the system could not keep up with its growth. Southwest engineers developed a real-time messaging tool that could interface with SWIFT and ensure the delivery of necessary flight data. As a result, Southwest chose TIBCO SmartSockets. This system provides real-time updates for Southwest’s fleet management and operations. It provides guaranteed message delivery (GMD) and monitoring capabilities. For example, if the system goes down for any reason, the thousands of incoming weather messages from the FAA will be queued in the system rather than being lost. Southwest uses SmartSockets’ GMD features to manage the approximately 17,000 FAA weather messages received each day that are sent out, filed in a database, and then published to several different SWIFT applications. As a result Southwest has become leader in implementing newly developed innovative IT applications to achieve its efficiency and quality of service. This newly implemented technology allows for the airline to become competitive against the larger carriers like United, American, Delta, and US Air.

I like the article because it provides a significant milestone for capturing, storing, sharing, and managing flight operations data in real time. This visibility of data allows for the flight operations personnel to make better decisions for sending airplanes to alternate airports based on unpredictable storms or harsh weather conditions. Overall, this enhanced capability has resulted in improving the safety standard for the airline.

Reference: Success Story. Southwest Airlines Flies High with Real-Time Flight Data. TIBCO Software Inc., 2007. Website: http://www.tibco.com/resources/customers/successstory_southwest.pdf