Southwest Airline is actively considering a switch to a new internal reservations system and has narrowed its choices of vendors to Sabre and Amadeus.
The new came out of the airline’s Investor Day.
For the past two decades the airline has been using a reservations system known as SAAS, but a Southwest spokeswoman says the system has not been able to accommodate changes that Southwest wants to make.
“A new reservation system will help support, for example, codeshare: international travel: and easier re-accommodation capabilities, ect.,: the spokeswoman says.
Southwest indicated it does not have a timeline on when it will make a decision on of the two vendors to pick.
Amadeus’ signed a contract several years ago to build a reservations system for United Airlines but implementation never happened, although the contract remains in place. United Airlines backed off out of financial concerns.
Sabre has been making inroads with its SabreSonic reservations system in North America with implementations with JetBlue and WestJet, although Sabre lost out to HP, which picked up a contract to create a new reservations system for America Airlines.
Southwest is the largest domestic carrier in the US and its reservations system contract would be a prize for Sabre or Amadeus.