Yes. Globally the vast majority of airlines use either Amadeus, Apollo, or SABRE for everything from reservations to crew scheduling. United wrote Apollo, Ame

Yes. Globally the vast majority of airlines use either Amadeus, Apollo, or SABRE for everything from reservations to crew scheduling. United wrote Apollo, American wrote SABRE back in 1960. So yeah, other airlines have far better tech people and have for decades. While Southwest now pushes ticketing data to those three, as of a few years ago they were using other software for scheduling and even doing things by hand (like tracking bags) that other airlines had already automated. If anecdotes from crew are accurate the other problem is that Southwest did nothing to optimize their disaster recovery plan (if there even is one). Manual data entry can scale more than it is at Southwest, but they're still stuck in the teensy airline state of mind where even wildly inefficient workflows can scale. As for ADS-B, that's hopelessly naive. ADS-B tracks planes, not people. The problem Southwest is having is trying to figure out who is legal to work and where they are. Tracking equipment is so trivial in comparison it's largely a secondary concern.