Summary:
- Southwest Airlines has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider to modernise its technology foundation and transition to a fully cloud-based architecture by 2028.
- The airline is deploying AI and agent-based capabilities across operations, customer experience and software development to improve speed, scalability and reliability.
- Using AWS tools such as Kiro and agentic AI workflows, Southwest is accelerating legacy system modernisation and reshaping how its digital platforms are built and maintained.
Southwest Airlines – a Headline Partner of FTE Global, Dallas, Texas, 8 to 10 September 2026, and a Corporate Partner of the FTE Digital, Innovation & Startup Hub – is partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider to modernise its technology foundation and evolve how the airline operates, builds, and is able to serve its customers. As part of this partnership, Southwest will transition from a largely on-premises environment to a cloud-based, artificial intelligence (AI) and agent-enabled architecture on AWS by 2028, laying the foundation to operate with greater speed, flexibility, and reliability to support the business.
Technology powers nearly every part of the airline – from selling seats, to running daily operations, to supporting more than 70,000 employees. As the airline continues to evolve its business model and customer experience, it is also accelerating efforts to simplify its technology environment and improve how systems work together at scale.
“Southwest has always evolved our business with a focus on improving performance, efficiency, and reliability – and applying that same mindset to our technology with AWS is a core part of that strategy,” said Lauren Woods, Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Southwest Airlines. “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.”
Southwest is continuing to modernise its footprint on AWS, targeting a fully cloud-based environment by 2028 while expanding how it uses AI and agent-based capabilities across the business by adopting new tools like Amazon Quick.
“Southwest Airlines is using AI to deliver on its commitment to being a customer-obsessed airline,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President, Agentic AI, AWS. “By deploying AI agents across customer experience, operations, and software development, they’re accelerating innovation for 134 million travellers – and proving that pioneering ambition paired with AWS’ agentic AI capabilities delivers real, measurable results at scale.”
Southwest is using Kiro, AWS’ agentic coding service, to modernise its website – one of its largest and most critical customer-facing platforms. Historically, the platform has operated a large footprint of on-premises systems with long modernisation timelines. By leveraging Kiro to refactor legacy code, Southwest has accelerated that effort significantly. Kiro is now used by more than 2,700 developers to build features, help automate testing, and to generate the infrastructure in the cloud. This work is creating a foundation that is easier to evolve, scale, and support – helping Southwest move faster and automate tasks in minutes that used to take hours.
Beyond individual tools, Southwest is also transforming how software is built across the organisation. Using an intelligent software development workflow built on AWS capabilities like AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AIDLC) – Southwest is adopting a more agent-driven way of working. In this model, AI agents help move development forward, while engineering teams remain responsible for guiding, validating, and owning the outcomes.
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