How Southwest Airlines Uses FICO Optimization to Boost Operations

"Our mission at Southwest Airlines is to connect people with the important things in their life.”

Those are the words of Rusty Burlingame, senior operations research director for Southwest Airlines. FICO optimization has helped the US’s largest low-fare carrier solve some of its most compelling challenges, from fuel purchasing and airplane provisioning to crew planning and ground operations. And it’s not just Southwest customers and the business that benefit – as Rusty notes, instead of cutting staff due to optimization-driven efficiency savings, they’re able to free people to focus on more important tasks. 

Challenge:
Southwest wanted to leverage advanced analytics technology to improve customer experience, enhance employee engagement, and streamline operations to maximize revenue and support growth.

Solution:
FICO® Xpress Optimization

Results:
Southwest has successfully implemented optimization projects across the airline to support the business strategy focused on cost discipline and control, charging competitively low fares, increasing profitability, and enhancing passenger and crew satisfaction.

With FICO optimization technology, Southwest has:

• Reduced runtimes by 50%–90% for different projects
• Reduced planning time from two weeks to two days
• Increased overall on-time flight performance by 2%
• Automated manual planning and scheduling processes
• More efficiently controlled costs

“FICO Xpress Optimization underlies some of the biggest, most expensive problems that we solve at the airline,” said Rusty Burlingame, Principal Operations Research Advisor at Southwest Airlines. “Every day, we make thousands of operational decisions to keep the company running, and it can be difficult to consider all the options and make the best decisions. Optimization enables us to enumerate and model the problems and see a bigger solution space. FICO’s software enables us to come up with good answers very quickly.”

Read the new case study for insights regarding Southwest’s optimization plans, with a focus on how FICO® Xpress Optimization Suite is powering these innovations.

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