Lockheed FSS admitting their shortcomings/solutions via personal phone calls to pilots

On Sat, 19 May 2007 11:06:11 -0400, "Peter R."
wrote in :

I just received a personal phone call at home today (Saturday morning) from a
ranking manager at Lockheed's FSS. The purpose of the call was to admit their
shortcomings and attempt to instill some hope that Lockheed is correcting all
of their problems with the briefing/flight plan system. The call came as a
result of me filing a poignant complaint via the FSS website two weeks ago.

In addition to software corrections, the manager also admitted that LM has
authorized unlimited overtime for their briefers until hold times have been
permanently reduced.

This manager seemed to me to be genuinely sincere and quite humbled to be
making the phone call.


If LockMart were sincere, they'd have headed the Transportation Office
of Inspector General's study predicting failure _BEFORE_ proceeding:


STUDY PREDICTED TROUBLE WITH FSS TRANSITION

The plans that government contractor Lockheed Martin had in place
for this spring to consolidate Flight Service Stations and
implement new software were doomed to fail. That's the gist of the
results from a
study (http://www.oig.dot.gov/item.jsp?id=2051) by the Department
of Transportation Office of Inspector General that was released
last week. The study was conducted from May 2006 to March 2007,
just before the system began to experience major problems

(http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news...195217-1.html).
The DOT OIG found "significant, inherent risks" associated with
the consolidation phase of the transition, which is now underway.
The planned six-month consolidation schedule was "extremely
aggressive," the DOT Inspector General's report says. The schedule
depended on deploying new software on time, and the software
development was already behind schedule. Infrastructure issues
were likely to arise in combining digital and analog networks.
"Improvements are needed to ensure that the operational needs of
users continue to be met," the report says.
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#195262