American Airlines | IBM · machine learning. The coding time previously dedicated to maintenance is now available for new requirements, helping American innovate for its customers

American Airlines | IBM https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/american-airlines#

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Solution: IBM Cloud Industry: Travel & Transportation

AmericanAirlinesThe route to customerexperience transformation isthrough the cloudTo become more responsive to customerneeds, American Airlines needed a newtechnology platform and a new approachto development that would help it deliverdigital self-service tools and customervalue more rapidly across its enterprise.IBM is helping the airline migrate someof its critical applications to the IBMCloud while using new methodology tocreate innovative applications quicklywhile improving the customerexperience.

IBM Cloud flies with AmericanAirlines

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Costsavings

by avoidingexistingupgradecosts via amigration tothe IBMCloud

Improved

operationalreliability,productivityand endcustomerresponsetimes

Faster

developmentand releaseof new apps

Business challengeCustomer experience is a key competitivedifferentiator for airlines, and increasingly dependson digital channels. How could American meet itscustomers’ appetite for instant information andservices?

TransformationWorking with IBM to migrate some of their key legacycustomer-facing applications to VMware HCX on IBMCloud, while simultaneously transforming them to acloud-native based microservices architecture isenabling the world's largest airline to innovate fasterin response to changing customer needs.

Results

Business challenge storyTaking to the digital skies

In the highly competitive airline industry, customer


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experience is a major point of differentiation – anddigital channels are increasingly important.

American Airlines wanted to provide convenientdigital services for customers and understood therewas an opportunity to remove the constraints of theexisting legacy architecture, platform, organization,development and operations approaches. Customer-facing applications were based on monolithic code,duplicated and managed in silos. Every changerequired the same work in up to three places, eachmanaged by different teams.

To respond better and faster to customer needs,American Airlines needed to transform the way theyworked to take advantage of new technologyfeatures. There was a need to update its technologystack, further increase agility, and introduce DevOpsconcepts while leveraging an open and flexible cloudplatform.

Transformation storyMigrate, transform, operate

Migrate: IBM’s comprehensive proposal addressedAmerican’s immediate and long term operational

IBM was pivotal in helping us work in a different way. Ithink we even surprised ourselves on how fast we could

put the app into customers' hands.—Jason Hobbs, Senior Manager, Application Development , American Airlines

“”


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concerns through a seamless migration of on-premise servers to IBM Cloud’s Infrastructure as aService with VMware Cloud Foundation solution.

Transform: IBM also proposed to accelerate thetransformation of American’s applicationdevelopment, organization and skills, based on itsIBM Cloud Garage Method. As IBM and Americanjointly developed the new cloud-native apps in CloudFoundry on IBM Public Cloud Platform as a Service,the old components would be retired.

Operate: The solution brings operations into thedevelopment squads, and leverages IBM’s CloudSolutions Operations Center to provide 24-hourapplication support and management services, withthe IBM team located both onsite at American’slocation and at an IBM off-shore location.

Accelerated development: The move tomicroservices

During the negotiations for the big-picturetransformation contract, American Airlines asked IBMfor help with an urgent requirement – which wouldalso act as a proof-point for IBM’s proposed way ofworking. The airline wanted to give customers betterself-service capabilities in the event of a forcedrebooking due to a major weather event disruptingoperations.

While American’s algorithms typically rebookpassengers on the next best flight, customers had tocall the reservation desk or visit an airport agent ifthey wanted to discuss other options. Americanwanted customers to be able to see otherpossibilities and update their flight selection via the


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website, mobile app or at a self-service kiosk.

With the busy summer season approaching, thecompany president challenged American to deliver anew customer-facing Dynamic Rebooking app withinjust a few months – a challenge that could not beachieved with the legacy approach and would havetaken at least twice that amount of time.

American approached IBM for help, and keen toprove its credentials, IBM stepped up to thechallenge. The centerpiece of the IBM transformationis the IBM Cloud Garage Method, a holisticmethodology covering technology, people, processesand organization. As the first step in the DynamicRebooking project, IBM and American Airlines’developers met and rapidly built more than 200 userstories to guide the development of the new app.

Next, the teams identified their first MVP (minimumviable product – the simplest possible applicationthat meets the business requirements) and started tocode. The use of microservices, paired programmingand test-driven development enabled a highlyparallelized approach that accelerated the creation ofthe new cloud-native code. Microservices allowedeach business function to be broken down intosimple, reusable functions that can be composed andcalled as many times as required by any connectedplatforms.

After just four and a half months, the DynamicRebooking app was released to production in eightairports, and steadily rolled out to more airports whiletesting, development and updates continued in thebackground.


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Jason Hobbs, Senior Manager, ApplicationDevelopment at American Airlines, says: “IBM waspivotal in helping us work in a different way. I thinkwe even surprised ourselves on how fast we couldput the app into customers' hands.”

Results storyFast, efficient and convenient

American Airlines launched Dynamic Rebooking inless than half the time expected, and now has an appthat is easy to enhance based on customer feedback.

From a process, culture and education standpoint, IBM hasbeen there every step of the way, helping us keep pace

with customer expectations.—Maya Leibman, EVP and Chief Information Officer, American Airlines

“”


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Hosting on the IBM Cloud Foundry platform paidfurther dividends when Hurricane Irma struck. Thebusiness decided overnight to deploy the app globallyto all of American's airports.

Patrick Morin, Managing Director of CustomerTechnology, American Airlines, comments: “One ofour expectations with the IBM Cloud was that thehyper-scale should relieve concerns aroundinfrastructure when rolling out an applicationglobally. When the hurricanes hit, we put that to thetest and our confidence turned out to be well-founded: the application worked flawlessly, andwe’ve since rolled it out to all 300-plus airportswithout any issues.”

American has received great customer feedback onthe new app, which provides vital information andcontrol to customers when travel plans are disrupted.Customers almost always choose the airline’s firstsuggestion: a clear validation of American’sunderlying algorithms.

Julie Rath, Managing Director, Customer ServiceRecovery at American Airlines, comments: “TheDynamic Rebooking tool finds the best solution foreach customer, walks them through the rebookingprocess, handles the ticket reissue, serves up theboarding pass, and sends a reroute message for theirbaggage. By giving control back to the customer, wemake a positive impact on their experience.”

Deep transformation

While Dynamic Rebooking was in development, IBMand American also worked on the bigger migration ofaa.com, customer mobile and kiosk apps to IBM


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Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, using VMware HCXon IBM Cloud to automate the migration of hundredsof VMware virtual machines to the IBM Cloud. Thissliced six months from the original timeline, enablingAmerican to avoid a looming capital expenditure torefresh its existing hardware. Migrating to IBM Cloudalso significantly improved server performance andreliability, and reduced the end user response time.

IBM assumed responsibility for operational managedservices for both the migrated and transformedenvironments via a single support model for multi-cloud environments.

With customer-facing apps running on openplatforms in the IBM Cloud, and a cloud-nativeapproach to development, American is achieving itskey objective of innovating faster in response tochanging customer requirements. The airline can alsoplug in other pre-built services on IBM Cloud, such asweb load balancing, weather forecasting andmachine learning. The coding time previouslydedicated to maintenance is now available for newrequirements, helping American innovate for itscustomers and outpace competitors. Beyond thetechnology, American has more closely aligned itsbusiness and technology organizations to worktogether in rapid cycles of co-creation to meetcustomer needs.

Maya Leibman, EVP & Chief Information Officer,American Airlines, concludes: “From a process,culture and education standpoint, IBM has beenthere every step of the way, helping us keep pacewith customer expectations.”


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About American Airlines

American Airlines Group Inc. was formed onDecember 9, 2013 with the closing of the mergerbetween American Airlines and US Airways Group.The company has more than 120,000 employees andlists on NASDAQ Global Select Market under theticker symbol AAL. In 2015, its stock joined the S&P500 index.

American Airlines and American Eagle offer anaverage of nearly 6,700 flights per day to nearly 350destinations in more than 50 countries. American hashubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, LosAngeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, andWashington, D.C. American is a founding member ofthe oneworld® alliance, whose members serve morethan 1,000 destinations with about 14,250 dailyflights to over 150 countries.

Solution components

6950-17K VMware Cloud Foundation on IBMCloud (Cloud BU)

IBM Bluemix

IBM Bluemix Garage

IBM Bluemix Virtual Servers


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American Airlines | IBM · machine learning. The coding time previously dedicated to maintenance is now available for new requirements, helping American innovate for its customers