Doing consulting for a big consulting co, I have many friends who have done work for all of the major airlines. From what they tell me, they all actually have v

Doing consulting for a big consulting co, I have many friends who have done work for all of the major airlines. From what they tell me, they all actually have very robust engineering orgs, and the systems that run things like the website, backend payment systems, security systems, finance apps etc are pretty advanced. The problem is that those systems are pretty segmented from the systems that schedule/dispatch planes and staff. Those systems are incredibly complicated due to the complex nature of managing the status/location of 1,000+ airplanes, millions of pieces of cargo, thousands of flight attendants and pilots, etc. And those systems also often have to interface with antiquated airport or FAA systems. As a result, making changes to the reservations or flight management system is a lot different than working on a web app.