Supporting the sky Computer mediated co-operation to fly aircraft

To fly aircraft many people from various organizations have to cooperate. The justifiable strict safety requirements have led to very strict allocation of responsibilities and corresponding separation of tasks. Over the years every party has developed its own proprietary system. The resulting patchwork of systems exhibits a slow response to the current market-driven changes at increasingly unaffordable costs. In the general domain servicedriven network-centric solutions are used. To assess the feasibility of these solutions for air transport a prototype for air transport has been realized. For the prototype a multi national consortium has been established. Our project experience yields some lessons learned about computer support to facilitate such co-operation.