This conversation from BusinessWeek explores the question, “Does IT Matter?”
This article from BusinessWeek about the software problems leading to Airbus’ $6.1 billion wiring problem answers the question pretty handily, I think.
Both of our flights for this trip were on Boeings (767-200 and 757-200), and they were pretty smooth, except for the hydraulic problem I mentioned for yesterday’s flight home. When we touched down, I said to Amy, “Well, I guess the hydraulics worked, huh?” She joked that, when we looked back from the jetway, we’d notice that the plane had flat tires.
Followup: Airbus’ CEO quit after 100 days on the job, because he couldn’t get authority to make the sweeping changes. What’s BW say today?
The debacle has exposed a fundamental Airbus flaw. Far from the smooth-running pan-European group depicted in its public relations, its units in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain remain surprisingly balkanized, each clinging to traditional operating methods and cross-border jealousies. “It is still, in part, a juxtaposition of four companies,” Streiff [the departing CEO] told the French newspaper Le Figaro in the only interview he has given since resigning.