At the core of every airline is its flight schedule – how it manages thousands of flights carrying millions of passengers to cities around the world.

Amadeus and network optimisation company Optym together have a suite of tools that provide the most effective solution to harness the complexity of flight scheduling.

The companies are announcing that Southwest Airlines, the largest domestic air carrier in the US, has selected the full Amadeus Sky Suite by Optym with ten-year agreement.

The suite of five industry-first solutions gives Southwest the most comprehensive and advanced technology for all its network planning, simulation, forecasting and optimisation needs.

These tools will enable the carrier to increase the efficiency and network optimisation of its more than 4,000 flights a day to 99 destinations in the US and ten additional countries.

The Amadeus Sky Suite by Optym includes SkyMAX for network optimisation, SkySYM for network simulation, SkyPLAN for frequency and capacity optimization, SkyCAST for network planning and SkyWORKS for intelligent schedule development.

The Sky Suite will be deployed using Microsoft Azure Cloud Hosting.

“These new tools will enable us to offer more to our customers through better route planning techniques and uncovering new ways to continue growing our network in a meaningful way,” said Adam Decaire, vice president network planning, Southwest Airlines.

“We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Amadeus and Optym and look forward to building an even stronger network planning team.”

This announcement deepens Southwest’s agreement with Optym when it became the first airline to implement SkyMAX and SkySYM in 2015.

It also marks another step forward for Southwest and Amadeus, as Southwest is an Altéa Passenger Service System customer.

“At Amadeus, we value the opportunity to support Southwest in its strategic investments to deliver continued growth,” said Elena Avila, executive vice president, airlines, Americas, for the company.

“Deepening our partnership with this long-term commitment for flight scheduling is a testament to how well our companies work and innovate together.

“We believe airlines of all sizes, across the globe, will benefit from these innovative new technologies.

“Southwest is an ideal inaugural customer to demonstrate the breadth of those benefits.”