Southwest Airlines and the Move to

Centralized Technical Publications

Southwest Airlines, the acknowledged low cost airline leader, invented the category in 1971
and today flies over 100 million passengers annually. SWA reached these heights, in part, with a
laser focus on controlling costs through efficiency throughout the enterprise. Homogeneous
fleets with well-defined processes for operating and maintaining them are a key part of that
focus. But even leaders recognize that staying on technology’s cutting edge is critical to
maintaining an advantage in the airline industry’s most competitive segment.

Don Tilden, Director, Central Publications at SWA, saw an opportunity to enhance the
airline's methods for managing the near-endless stream of technical information flowing into
and through enterprise systems - to staffers and outsourced service providers worldwide.
Without immediate, global access to the freshest, most accurate technical information, delays –
and related revenue risks - are inevitable. Meanwhile, regulatory compliance - a key priority for
every flight operations professional - can become an overwhelming task, in the absence of
systems specifically built to meet this requirement.

Regulation Never Sleeps

When regulators come calling, airlines welcome the scrutiny in the interest of passenger and
crew safety; an exemplary industry safety record is the result. Southwest leads the industry in
this area, as evidence by their very public Safety Commitment. But regulatory scrutiny is
constant, as are demands for demonstrating well-defined flight ops processes and adherence to
them. The challenge: how to efficiently supply regulators with the information they need, in
formats they (and the airline) can easily use, without incurring huge costs and delays in everyday
flight operations?

Tilden believed that a move to centralized technical publications management – across a

wide range of airline departments and functions – would be essential to this task. Like many
airlines, SWA had assembled a complex set of systems to accommodate the needs of individual
departments’ technical publications requirements. For example, maintenance and flight
operations personnel used different systems to manage data – often causing a duplication of
effort.

Join Southwest in Barcelona

The story of how Southwest arrived at their conclusions about
centralized information management, how the move to it would
be handled, the benefits SWA expected, and more, will be
discussed at the World Low Cost Airline Congress in Barcelona on September 29-30, 2009.
Join Don Tilden, TechPubs, and other experts as they explore the issues and considerations
SWA grappled with in evaluating this advanced technology – and how your airline might
benefit from a similar effort.

TechPubs Inc is pleased to offer attendees a special discount on admission to the event. To
receive the discount, go to https://secure.terrapinn.com/V5/calc.aspx?E=2892&R=HTEC