Trans World Airlines Inc. emphasized winning user support in its rollout of an intranet application for pilot scheduling. The airline chose a strategy for getting its pilots to use its system as carefully as it chose the technology to run its most complex corporate calendar applications.
Pilots fly half of the month, and half the month they are off.
Because of that, you have people living in Hawaii or Southern Florida, or from anywhere else they are comfortable commuting. Yet, building a place where pilots can hang out has been a ticklish subject. Pilots are among the strongest unionized work forces in the United States, which means that there has to be official sign-off on any new system. Through the design of the intranet application, TWA addressed concerns raised by its pilots' union about maintaining the contract rights of senior-ranking pilots. As it created user interfaces for reporting to mandated training courses, accountability issues over the reliability of Internet messages surfaced.