Case USA42: Why a US Airline Mistook Crew Scheduling Dashboards for Enterprise Architecture Maturity
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Aug 8
- 1 min read
Updated: Oct 29
Overview:
This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US airlines have mislabeled operational visibility tools as “Enterprise Architecture progress.” A recurring pattern is treating real-time crew scheduling dashboards as proof of architectural maturity. Flight ops could see crew availability instantly, and reassignments were faster — yet the enterprise structure linking scheduling, rostering, regulatory compliance, and disruption recovery was never modeled.
P1–P6 Insight Preview:
Dashboards improved operational monitoring (P6 business) and component visibility (P4), but lacked strategy alignment to airline network goals (P1) and unified process logic for crew management (P2).
System behavior (P3) remained fragmented; tech ops (P6) maintained multiple rostering engines.
Role Disconnects:
CEO: “We’ve made crew allocation real-time” — but disruption recovery still stalls.
CIO: “All crew data is visible” — yet system logic is inconsistent across hubs.
Sales Head (Commercial Ops): “Better crew allocation improves flight reliability” — until irregular ops kick in.
Chief EA: “We visualized the problem, not the architecture”
Head of Crew Operations: “I can see the gaps, but still need manual workarounds to fix them”
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