Enterprise product strategy · Airport operations
How do you change the tools people rely on when the operation can’t stop?
Throughout and following the merger of American Airlines and US Airways, airport employees were navigating different legacy systems and processes to support customers when travel didn’t go as planned. I led product strategy and implementation for operational tools that helped bring those experiences together across a network of more than 300 airports.
When airline operations break down, the impact spreads quickly. A delayed or canceled flight can create baggage issues, missed connections, overnight accommodations, meal needs, transportation challenges, and thousands of customers looking to employees for answers and help. Throughout the merger, American was also bringing together two airlines with different technologies, processes, vendors, and ways of working. The service recovery products supporting those moments had to evolve without disrupting the operation employees were already trying to recover. That meant balancing modernization with operational continuity, coordinating decisions across technology and business teams, and designing for frontline employees who needed tools to work quickly and reliably under pressure.
We weren’t implementing technology into a controlled environment. We were changing critical tools while the operation continued around us.
What I saw
Replacing the old tool wasn’t the goal. The new product had to make the work better.
Service recovery looked like a technology problem, but the success of these products depended just as much on understanding the operation and the people doing the work. These tools were used when employees and customers were already dealing with something going wrong. A product could technically work and still make the experience worse if it slowed employees down, removed functionality they depended on, or failed to account for what was critical in their workflow.
That made prioritization especially important. We couldn’t always deliver everything at once, but what we released still needed to support the critical work employees had to do and improve on the experience we were asking them to leave behind. That meant knowing what was critical, prioritizing it, and never treating “partially works” as good enough.
What I changed
I led these products from strategy through implementation.
I connected frontline needs with business priorities, technical realities, vendor capabilities, and the operational requirements of a 300+ airport network. My role was to make sure we weren’t simply replacing technology, but improving how employees could support customers when the operation was under pressure, which meant making deliberate tradeoffs and planning releases around an operation that couldn’t simply stop.
01 · Prioritize
Protect the critical workflow first.
I worked directly with frontline and operational teams to understand workflows, pain points, and critical capabilities, then used those insights to decide what had to be available at launch and what could evolve through later releases.
02 · Design with users
Bring operational reality into the product.
I incorporated frontline feedback throughout planning and delivery, using real operational scenarios to identify gaps and challenge requirements, so new tools improved the work rather than recreating existing processes in new technology.
03 · Connect the ecosystem
Align more than the product team.
I coordinated across airport operations, customer experience, technology teams, vendors, and frontline leadership to manage dependencies, resolve competing needs, and connect product decisions to the systems and processes around them.
04 · Plan for the moment of change
Treat implementation as part of the experience.
I built phased rollout, cutover, contingency, and communication plans around operational constraints, so teams could introduce new technology while protecting employees and customers if something didn’t go as planned.
Products built for service recovery at scale
Different moments, one requirement: reliable tools under pressure.
Baggage tracing
One way to manage baggage recovery across the merged airline.
Led the transition to NetTracer, bringing legacy baggage tracing processes together into a unified platform employees could use to locate, track, and recover mishandled baggage across the network.
Notifications
Information before customers had to go looking for it.
Helped launch proactive baggage notifications that gave customers greater visibility when bags were delayed, shifting part of the experience from reactive service recovery to proactive communication.
Hotel, meal & transportation
Help employees recover customers faster during disruptions.
Led implementation of an automated service recovery platform that helped employees arrange hotel accommodations, meals, and ground transportation for customers affected by operational disruptions.
Airports. Enterprise network deployment.
Customers annually, reached through proactive baggage communications.
To convert 300+ airports to the hotel, meal, and transportation recovery platform.
What changed because of it
The result wasn’t simply a new set of systems.
These products changed how employees supported customers during some of the most difficult moments in the travel experience, while helping American bring together legacy processes and technology across the merged airline. Each implementation also created a foundation the organization could continue to build on rather than treating modernization as a one-time replacement effort.
01 · A more unified operation
Employees could work from more consistent tools and processes.
Bringing legacy experiences together reduced differences across the merged airline and gave employees a more consistent way to support customers across the network.
02 · More proactive support
Service recovery could begin before a customer asked for help.
Proactive baggage communications gave customers visibility into what was happening with their bags, providing information directly instead of waiting for customers to seek answers.
03 · Faster support in disruptions
Better tools for the moments when speed mattered most.
Automating parts of hotel, meal, and transportation recovery reduced reliance on manual processes and helped employees move customers toward solutions.
04 · A foundation to build on
Launch wasn’t the finish line.
By prioritizing critical capabilities first and continuing to learn from frontline use, the products could evolve after implementation instead of requiring every possible need to be solved before employees got a better experience.
What this taught me
The best product decisions happen when you understand what the work feels like, not just how it’s supposed to work.
Before I led products for airport operations, I was one of the employees relying on those tools to keep the operation moving and help customers when things went wrong. I knew what it felt like when flights canceled, customers needed answers, bags went missing, systems weren’t cooperating, and employees were trying to solve several problems at once.
That experience stayed with me when I moved into product leadership. It taught me to look beyond requirements and ask what was truly critical in the workflow, what employees couldn’t afford to lose, and what would actually make their jobs easier under pressure. It also shaped how I thought about prioritization: delivering incrementally didn’t mean asking users to accept a worse experience while we worked toward a better one.
Changing critical systems mid-flight?
Let’s make the change work for the people on the front line.
Modernization is only successful if the work gets better.
Let’s talk →or email sbinger@stephaniebinger.com
Better questions lead to brighter ideas.