How Southwest Airlines is putting endpoint operations on autopilot

"Bottom line is we now focus our team's time on proactive and preventative work and increasing the digital employee experience and not waiting for issues to arise before focusing on them, said Whisenhunt."

"Southwest has been steadily digitizing frontline workflows for the past decade, replacing paper-based operational processes with mobile devices and cloud applications for its maintenance, flight operations, and gate services workers - and even cabin crews."

"The Dallas-based company has largely digitized operations for its 72,000 staffers - two-thirds of which are in frontline roles - replacing the printed manuals used by pilots and ground operations teams with mobile devices, for instance."

"You've seen it, or you've experienced this, said Whisenhunt. If you go up to a customer service or a gate agent and you can see the line start to extend - or the customers start to get frustrated and the agent's on the phone with somebody - that's either a ticket issue or it's a system issue."

Southwest Airlines increasingly uses AI and automation to prevent endpoint problems from affecting frontline operations. Digital tools have become central to airline workflows, and the IT team uses these technologies to shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive prevention. The company has digitized frontline processes over the past decade, replacing paper-based methods with mobile devices and cloud applications for maintenance, flight operations, gate services, and cabin crews. Southwest supports large-scale end user computing, including tens of thousands of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. Endpoint hardware or software failures can quickly impact customers due to tight aircraft turnaround times, making early detection and prevention critical to service continuity.

Read at Computerworld