Case Study: Southwest Airlines achieves major fuel-cost reductions and cuts forecasting time from 3 days to 10 minutes with Alteryx

Reducing Fuel Expenses at Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines, serving 97 destinations with about 3,500 daily flights, faced a major cost-control challenge: fuel accounted for roughly 27% of operating costs, and inaccurate forecasts led to costly under- or over-ordering. Forecasting had been done manually across about 150 Excel spreadsheets, a slow (up to three days) and error-prone process that lacked robust statistical modeling.

The team used historical monthly consumption data and Alteryx with R to build automated time-series models (ARIMA, regression, exponential smoothing) across four consumption categories, plus an algorithm to select the best model per airport. Delivered as a web app with visualizations, the solution boosted forecast accuracy (≈70% improvement for non-scheduled flights, ≈12% for scheduled), cut execution time from three days to 10 minutes, enabled a 12‑month horizon, and added outlier detection and seasonality insights; models are being deployed to production for ongoing use.

Southwest Airlines

Omid Madadi

Operations Research Developer