Summary and Evaluation: Continental Airlines Flies High with Real-Time Business Intelligence

Southwest Airlines Co., established in 1971 by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, began its operations with only three Boeing 737 aircrafts. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas(Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). Southwest is well known as one of the largest low-cost carriers. With this strategy, the company has dramatically grown up and deeply rooted in the US airline industry. Now, Southwest Airlines Co. operates 633 aircrafts to 93 domestic cities and the highest number of passengers used Southwest Airlines to fly around U.S in Jan 2014 (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012). To accomplish more than 40th consecutive years of both profitability and competitiveness, Southwest Airlines Company is constantly trying to find the routes to differentiate itself from other domestic carriers (Hawkins, Misra, & Tang, 2012).

Southwest Airlines is a major US airline established in 1967 that services a multitude of cities in all 50 states and beyond. The company is known for its outstanding quality in providing services and it 's cost effective ticket prices to its many passengers throughout the nation. This airline is based in the southwestern United States, in the city of Dallas Texas, and due to the tremendous number of airplanes that it has and the timely service that it provides to its passengers, this airline services more US passengers than any other airline. This airline also has the largest fleet of planes of any economical or low-cost airline service in the world and employees more than 45,000.

This paper will give a historical overview of the company, discuss the ingredients to the company success, offer some financial strengths and present a final conclusion. Section I: Southwest's History Twenty-seven years ago, Rollin King, a San Antonio entrepreneur who owned a small commuter air service, and Kelleher, who was a lawyer at the time, got together and decided to start a different kind of airline. They began with one simple notion. If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make certain they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline. And you know what? They were right. Within those 27 years, Southwest Airlines became the fifth largest major airline in America. Today, they have flown over 50 million passengers a year to 54 cities all over the southwest and beyond. They do it over 2,300 times a day with over 267 of the newest jets in the nation and fly only one type aircraft; the B-737. The average age of their fleet is only 8.4 years and they own over sixty percent of them. In May 1988, they were the first airline to win the coveted U.S. Department of Transportation Triple Crown for a month - Best On-time Record, Best Baggage Handling, and Fewest Customer Complaints. Since then, they've won it

Southwest Airlines possesses a very flexible and dynamic organizational structure that allows it to react rapidly, adapt swiftly and view environmental changes as opportunities rather than threats. After September 11, many companies went bankrupt due to this there was an unmet demand of flights. Southwest has taken the need of people to fly faster from one place to another and used it to their advantage by offering safest, fastest and cheapest way. The improved website can help attract more customers. As, it uses only one kind of aircraft its engineers can model an alternative fuel to lower fuel cost and conserve the environment. As proven

• Provide background on the global industry • Present a regional analysis • Discuss current and future evolvement of the industry (trends) • Discuss challenges and strategies impacting the industry • Discuss the new breed of airlines • Discuss why airlines fail and how to achieve success

What information is accessible? The data warehouse offers possibilities to define what’s offered through metadata, published information, and parameterized analytic applications. Is the data of high value? Data warehouse patrons assume reliability and value. The presentation area’s data must be correctly organized and harmless to consume. In terms of design, the presentation area would be planned for the luxury of its consumers. It must be planned based on the preferences articulated by the data warehouse diners, not the staging supervisors. Service is also serious in the data warehouse. Data must be transported, as ordered, promptly in a technique that is pleasing to the business handler or reporting/delivery application designer. Lastly, cost is a feature for the data

They have one of the most successful global distribution systems in the industry, which has placed the company a high competitive advantage. This system is now used by travel agents around the world and have available information from various airlines, hotels, cruise lines and car rentals. The airline industry has changed over the years due to computerized reservations systems which have made travel planning easier, created new companies but have also placed some jobs in jeopardy. All of these challenges and changes will continue to contribute to the future of the air travel industry.

Data warehouse has different concepts of data. Each concept is divided into a specific data mart. Data mart deals with specific concept of data, data mart is considered as a subset of data warehouse. In Indiana University traditional data warehouse is unable to create large data storage. Further it shows any errors and imposed rules on data. The early binding method is disadvantage. It process longer time to get enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to initiate and running. We need to design our total EDW, from every business rule through outset. The late binding architecture is most flexible to bind data to business rules in data modeling through processing. Health catalyst late binding is flexible and raw data is available in data warehouse. It process result by 90 days and stores IU data without any errors.

A data warehousing is defined as a collection of data designed to support management decision making. Data warehouses contains a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of the business conditions at a single point in time. Development of a data warehouse includes development of the systems that extract data from operating systems plus the installation of the warehouse database system that provides managers flexible access to the data. The term data warehousing generally refer to the combination of many different databases across an entire enterprise. (webopidia)

Since the enormous breakthrough of aviation, early in the 20th century, commercial airlines have been playing the most part of our sky. One of the oldest, successful, and known airlines is the American Airlines. Today, this airline carries more fleet than any other airline in the entire world, which makes it solidly one of the biggest names in the aviation industry.

A data warehouse is a large databased organized for reporting. It preserves history, integrates data from multiple sources, and is typically not updated in real time. The key components of data warehousing is the ability to access data of the operational systems, data staging area, data presentation area, and data access tools (HIMSS, 2009). The goal of the data warehouse platform is to improve the decision-making for clinical, financial, and operational purposes.

Southwest Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the United States by number of passengers carried each year (Inkpen, 2013). The company had been profitable for decades unlink other major competitors and also was able to weather 2008-09 recession (Inkpen, 2013). At southwest, leadership philosophy is to manage well at good times to prosper through bad times (Inkpen, 2013). The airlines we found by Herb Kelleher and San Antonio in the year 1970. Southwest began flying in year 1971 in three Texas cities with three aircrafts and 25 employees. Its initial focus: Short-haul, point-to-point flights, a fleet of Boeing 737s, low fares and high-frequency flights (Inkpen, 2013). In year 2012, 81% of its passengers booked tickets via

Even before their first flight, major airline carriers threatened by the competition, held Southwest’s arrival into the market for 5 years. Starting out as a small commuter air service, the company quickly grew into one of the largest and most successful airlines in the industry. It began with the founders Rollin King, an entrepreneur, and Herb Kelleher, an attorney, who demonstrated strategic leadership from the beginning. The company began when the two gentlemen saw an opportunity to address the inconvenience and expense of ground travel between three major cities of Texas; Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.

Southwest Airlines was created in the late 1960’s by a businessperson Rolling King, and law school graduate Herb Kelleher, who sought a faster travel time between Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas (Dess, et al., 2014, p. C137). After overcoming all of the antagonism and legal problems of many major airlines, Southwest was able to take its first flight in 1971 (Dess, et al., 2014, p.C137). With a dedication and will power to grow the company, King and Kelleher sought out ways to increase growth.

Data warehouse are multiple databases that work together. In other words, data warehouse integrates data from other databases. This will provide a better understanding to the data. Its primary goal is not to just store data, but to enhance the business, in this case, higher education institute, a means to make decisions that can influence their success. This is accomplished, by the data warehouse providing architecture and tools which organizes and understands the