Originally Posted by cessna157

There was absolutely no way for the product to be perfect when switched on. All new things have bugs in them. Look at the CRJ900s, look at the 700s when we were getting them new, look at EclipsX, look at the Saabs when we got them. That's why you start the system up and work the kinks out of it. It would be unreasonable to expect everything to be perfect. If you follow your same reasoning, a new pilot, or dispatcher, or scheduler, would NEVER be allowed to make even the smallest mistake their first day of the job. That would never be a reasonable request.



Not checking in/getting locked out: operator error. I had to help many guys the first day check in and out because they had no idea how or had no idea what the login was. Thats just ignorance on their part. We were provided all of the information on how to use the system with plenty of notice.
Not being able to verify crews/legality, etc: not true. You can bring up a fellow crew members' name and trip. If its first flight of a trip and you can't see if they worked late the night before, ask.

Guys, we're making this much more difficult than it needs to be. Contrary to what you may believe, I'm not some parade-marching Maestro supporter. I'm just saying give it time. When EclipsX was first introduced, it replaced ComNet which was a computer system designed in the 1980s, which was simple and worked fine, it just didn't have a whole lot of features. EclipsX came around and it could do a lot more....when it worked. But we ironed the kinks out of it. Trust me, there were several days that I came very close to walking off of the job because of that system.
About 2 years ago I was put on a project to test a new flight tracking software that they were planning on switching to. It was a Boeing/Jeppesen system that had so many bugs, was not user friendly, and just did the strangest things you could imagine (it would create Comair flights flying around the country out of its imagination). Myself, and a few others would not sign off on its use. So they trashed the system and upgraded what they already had, which was a perfectly fine system. The point is, if something new is going to be introduced, and it truely hampers the operation, it won't be put online. It will be tested, improved, and if that still doesn't work, it will be trashed. Maestro, so far, hasn't done anything horrendous yet.