Case Study: Continental Airlines achieves 1000%+ ROI and real-time business intelligence with Teradata

Continental Airlines - Customer Case Study

Continental Airlines, once ranked at the bottom of major performance metrics, set out to become not just the best airline but each customer’s favorite. The company faced fragmented, outsourced systems with limited historical data and no way to track origin-to-destination itineraries or see unified customer profiles—handicapping revenue management, customer relationship marketing, operations, crew planning and fraud detection. Continental needed a real-time, integrated information platform to support faster, smarter tactical and strategic decisions across the enterprise.

Continental built an in-house Enterprise and Active Data Warehouse on a Teradata platform with automated real-time feeds, a reusable Service Bureau, and strong governance that empowered business users to self-serve analytics. The result was dramatic: a return on investment of more than 1,000% on a $25M investment and roughly $250M in savings and incremental revenue over five years, plus continued annual gains (e.g., ~$40M in 2002), millions recovered and prevented in fraud, improved revenue and operations optimization, and widespread recognition for customer service and technology excellence.

Continental Airlines