In the intensively competitive world of air transportation, knowing what customers like and don't like, predicting how they will behave, and rapidly making decisions based on changing market conditions is critical to maximizing revenues. AA had used a mainframe-based SAS system for some time to analyze customer data but in the late 1990s found that the scale and volume of data to be managed and the accelerating competition created increasing challenges.

To overcome these obstacles, American Airlines deployed SPSS for Windows to replace its mainframebased analytics system, increasing productivity of its customer research team and improving decision making while reducing ongoing costs.