Inside the post-merger IT overhaul at Alaska Airlines

As an aviation industry veteran with over 30 years of experience, Alaska Airlines CIO Charu Jain is all too familiar with the technology integration process that often follows a big airline merger.

By her count, she’s been involved in four such projects. But none, she says, has brought her greater satisfaction than leading the overhaul of Alaska’s PSS following its $1.9 billion acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines in September 2024.

“This is one of the biggest milestones in any merger work done between airlines,” says Jain, speaking from her company’s Seattle offices just two months after Alaska and Hawaiian completed their transition to a shared PSS.

In its simplest terms, a PSS is an all-encompassing software suite used by airlines to record and manage a passenger’s journey, from booking tickets and checking in baggage at the airport, to boarding the aircraft and accessing the in-flight menu. “A PSS touches almost every function of an airline from employees to guests,” says Jain.

Two brands, one system

At the time of the merger, Alaska and Hawaiian each had its own PSS. No sooner had the ink dried on the deal than the cutover project got underway to bring both airlines’ systems under a single operating platform.

According to Jain, the two airlines agreed from the get-go that they’d retain their own unique historic brands, both with a combined history of close to 200 years, which would be reflected through the system.

“It had never been done before, developing capabilities to enable two brands on one platform,” adds Jain, who also serves as Alaska’s SVP of merchandising and innovation. “We didn’t want a situation where a passenger travelling from Spokane to Seattle on an Alaska-branded flight, and then onto Honolulu on a Hawaiian-branded flight, would have to navigate two separate systems. So we thought about how to make that experience more seamless.”

After settling on a PSS, developed by travel software manufacturer Sabre, Jain and her colleagues began work on migrating the airlines’ millions of bookings and passenger information, while also updating their various guest- and employee-facing tools for the new system.

Selling cutovers and mock flights

Executing a system cutover on such a large scale is a delicate balancing act, not least in a live-environment where, for a major airline, any form of disruption to the passenger experience can be bad for business. So there was no attempt to rush the project.

“To make sure we didn’t have any issues with customers’ bookings, we really took a risk-optimized approach with a phased deployment and a phased cutover,” says Jain.

Much of this hinged on what Alaska refers to as a selling cutover. Starting in October last year, all new bookings were made on the new PSS, which allowed the group to drain old bookings from the legacy system, and start selling tickets six months in advance of the official transition date; the average booking curve for an airline is around six months.

“There was no migration of millions of records and bookings,” says Jain. “This meant when our customers checked in on the first day [of the PSS], it was as if the booking had been made on the native system.”

While this was going on, however, Alaska was hit by a sizeable IT outage that grounded flights across the country and impacted the travel plans of nearly 50,000 passengers. It followed a previous IT outage in July. However, Jain says the disruptions didn’t impact the project in any way.

So in the final months leading up to the cutover completion, Alaska carried out several dress rehearsals to test the system, including mock flights for domestic and international routes in anticipation of the recent launch of several non-stop services to Europe.

This involved real guests arriving at the airport, completing check-in, going through security, and taking their seats as if they were about to take off. Leaving no stone unturned, the simulation also accounted for baggage collection, pets, wheelchair users, and onboard hospitality, stopping just short of passengers being served actual food.

Alaksa completed five such mock rehearsals in all. “The fifth one was when everything worked without any medium or high issues, and gave us the confidence we were ready,” says Jain.

As part of the airline’s scenario planning, it also set up command centers in various locations, including Honolulu and Seattle, to plan for unforeseen and unrelated problems on the day of the cutover.

A dedication to collaboration

A project is only ever as a good as its people, and Jain is quick to hail the collaborative spirit that Alaska and Hawaiian brought to the table. As a PSS involves both the operational side of an airline’s business — touching on everyone from pilots, flight attendants, and baggage handlers — and commercial departments responsible for policies and pricing, this was more than a purely technological undertaking.

“This was about people coming together from two companies to make this one big thing happen,” says Jain.

When Alaska started making bookings on the new PSS last fall as part of the selling cutover, it also began training employees how to use system. It was around that time as well, says Jain, that the airline was confident the transition would be completed by April 2026, just in time for the busy summer travel season.

Since the PSS has been up and running, the company has also introduced a single mobile app to replace Alaska and Hawaiian’s separate existing ones, allowing passengers to personalize their experience to the airline brand they’re more familiar with.

“It’s a much more seamless experience now that there’s no confusion knowing which app to go on, or why they have two booking numbers,” says Jain. Alaska’s employees are also just as happy with their new tools, she adds.