Originally Posted by fasteddie800

I shake my head at this as well.

Not only is United an airline, it's also a Fortune 100 company.

However, everything IT-related seems to be sized, funded, and staffed as if United were Joe Bob's Widget Factory and Bait Shop.

Management likes to talk about "how difficult IT is at an airline," and all of the challenges associated with having multiple legacy IT systems. They also talk about how hard it is to implement IT-related changes when you're flying 24/7/365.

We get it, it's hard. IT at an airline is a thorny problem. However, it's not rocket surgery. Other companies face worse IT challenges. They put time, effort, and money into them, and make progress on making things better.

I haven't seen a whole lot of measurable progress with IT at United. Things like transitioning maintenance of legacy UA aircraft onto legacy CO's SCEPTRE platform is a start, but it's taken much longer than originally planned, and just means that we've eliminated one piece of late 70's technology (AMIS) for another.

To make it work, you need people who understand IT and airplanes. Those folks aren't growing on trees, but they're out there. You just have to find them, and pay them appropriately. Instead, United likes to do things like put career aircraft-maintenance types in charge of IT projects. Sometimes it works OK, most times it doesn't. Often, we're beholden to IT subcontractors, and we just have to hand them a sack full of cash, and cross our fingers that things work out for the best.

It seems like it was the exact same five years ago, and I'd wager it's going to be the same five years from now.