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Southwest Airlines cargo to go international in 2017

DALLAS based Southwest Airlines, which flies only 737 narrowbody passenger aircraft and carried 98,400 tonnes of freight throughout its domestic network in 2015, is to go international in the New Year.

Wally Devereaux, Southwest's senior director, cargo and charters, told Air Cargo World that, in 2017, the airline will unveil a new point-of-sale and back-office IT system that will enable the carrier to make international freight bookings for the first time.

In 2011, when Southwest Airlines acquired Orlando-based AirTran Airways, it picked-up eighty-eight 717s and access to seven new international cities, giving Southwest's network a strong boost in Latin America.

Although the integration was more or less finished on the passenger side by the close of 2014, and the former AirTran 717s were slowly transferred to Delta Air Lines, Southwest has yet to carry cargo on its international routes.

Even today, "we are still not able to put cargo on those international flights," Mr Devereaux said. "And that is certainly something we wanted to be able to do ?to be able to grow [cargo], as Southwest Airlines grows, beyond the United States."

The largest obstacle preventing international bookings, Mr Devereaux added, was the antiquated, closed-loop IT infrastructure built in the 1990s. After tinkering with a few off-the-shelf products, the airline eventually decided it was time to design and develop the system in-house.

Now that a new system is more than two-thirds operational, Southwest's cargo division has started to explore how the new capabilities of the IT system may factor into its long-term international strategy, such as the ability to share electronic airway bills, accept payments in multiple currencies and exchange messages directly with US Customs.

Mr Devereaux said that, because forwarders will be able to book directly online, Southwest will also be able to pursue new opportunities to interline and partner more effectively with other carriers.

"We do very little interlining today, just out of our network to a couple of destinations?It's very manual and not scalable, but the new system will allow us to scale up these arrangements. With the interline capabilities, we fully intend to not only feed other carriers from our network, but also accept freight into our network from other carriers."

Moving into 2017, Southwest plans to replace its some of its aging 737-300s with new -800s and MAX variants. "There have been a few instances where Southwest's cargo division has persuaded its network planning division to 'upgauge' from a -300 to a -800, because of very specific cargo needs in that lane."