Case Study: IT keeps airline on business course

There are a lot of tough industries for a CIO to work in, but few would dispute that the airline industry is one of the toughest given years of mergers, Ch. 11 bankruptcies, layoffs and overall industry decay. So it was more than a formidable task that Joe Beery had in taking on the CIO role at US Airways after its merger with America West Airlines. Not only were there the usual integration issues in melding two different enterprise systems--the quest to get one singular platform up and running--the tech leader was constantly focused on keeping costs down and trying to gain efficiencies wherever and whenever possible. As he explains, the effort to consolidate and get a smooth integration process in place isn't easy when you also have to keep systems and application running at full power.

For more on the new airline's tech efforts:
- read this article at CIO