Blog

October 23, 2026

How major airlines are tackling cognitive load, legacy tech, and rapid innovation

See how flight dispatchers are replacing legacy tools with Maverick Dispatch™ to streamline workflows, visualize Smart NOTAMs, and reduce training from days to minutes.

by Chris Oak, Lead Product Manager, Aviation | The Weather Company

Aviation Conference partners sitting on the partner panel

Key takeaways

Prioritize cognitive load reduction with Maverick Dispatch: Consolidating disparate weather tabs, NOTAM feeds, and alert systems into a single ASD platform reduces mental fatigue, eliminates desktop clutter, and speeds up operational decision-making.
Embrace out-of-the-box UX to slash training: Moving away from heavy manual interface customization to Maverick’s standardized, intuitive UI allows new dispatchers to get up and running in 30 minutes rather than days.
Demand agile SaaS innovation: Enterprise aviation software no longer needs to move slowly. Partnering with vendors operating on rapid sprint cycles ensures desktop tools like Maverick Dispatch evolve alongside changing operational needs.

Every year, The Weather Company hosts an invite-only Aviation Conference — a two-day collaborative summit bringing together flight operations executives, dispatch leaders, and technology innovators. Designed to educate, inform, and foster open dialogue between current and prospective clients, the event serves as a launchpad for the future of aviation technology.

A centerpiece of this year’s conference was the Maverick Dispatch™ Partner Panel, which brought together flight operations leaders across network and regional carriers.

Together, we explored how moving from legacy Aircraft Situational Display (ASD) platforms like Fusion to Maverick Dispatch™ — the cloud-native flight following platform from The Weather Company, formerly WSI — is reshaping operational workflows, reducing training footprints, and setting a new standard for vendor agility. Here are the key operational themes and strategic insights that emerged from the stage from three of our client participants.

Alan Burgess

Manager, IT Engineering & Flights Ops, American Airlines

Ken McNaught

Dispatch Manager, Horizon Air

Garrett Urry

Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch, Breeze Airways

1. The push to eliminate “37 open tabs”: Tackling dispatcher cognitive load

A dominant theme throughout the panel was the psychological and operational toll that software fragmentation places on flight dispatchers. In many operation control centers, dispatchers regularly monitor anywhere from 10 to 12 distinct software applications simultaneously across multi-monitor setups.

When a dispatcher must bounce between independent platforms for radar, turbulence forecasts, ACARS communications, flight tracking, and NOTAM updates, operational friction mounts — and cognitive fatigue sets in.

The new dispatcher coming out of school… They’ve closed out those 37 extra tabs … they’ve changed over to using Maverick… We’ve really taken the cognitive load down quite a few levels.”

Alan Burgess, Manager, IT Engineering & Flight Ops

American Airlines

By bringing alerting, weather visualization, and route building into a single pane of glass, operators can shift their focus from tool navigation to proactive decision-making.

At Breeze, some of the flows that we’ve seen improvement on — especially on the route building side — is being able to see available routes. You spend a lot less time bouncing between systems getting multiple alerts across multiple platforms. It consolidates that on a flight-by-flight basis.”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

That shift from active system management to passive, effortless awareness was echoed across regional desk operations:

What I’ve found is just naturally I’ve stopped using Fusion — as much as I love Fusion. I’ll bring Maverick up and it just works. The alerts area gives me awareness. It doesn’t require a lot from the end user to make it happen, whereas Fusion tends to have a lot more load on us to be making adjustments, looking for stuff, digging for things.”

Ken McNaught, Dispatch Manager

Horizon Air

2. Debating legacy systems “built for the Wright brothers”

One of the liveliest moments on stage was an unscripted debate over how airlines view legacy platforms that have anchored flight operations desks for over two decades. While legacy software like Fusion built a strong reputation for deep customization, panelists clashed over whether legacy architecture can keep pace with modern operational demands.

Other panelists offered a more measured perspective, emphasizing that while legacy platforms served the industry reliably, modern web architecture is required to unlock real-time innovation.

Summarizing the strategic shift, Alan used a compelling analogy to capture why airlines are looking beyond legacy tools:

Maverick is our new telescope. Fusion works fine, just like their old telescope, but Maverick is our vision.”

Alan Burgess, Manager, IT Engineering & Flight Ops

American Airlines

3. High-value visual innovations: Smart NOTAMs, 3D layers, and Global Surface Movement

When asked to highlight their favorite features in Maverick Dispatch, the panelists focused on features that transform complex tabular data into intuitive visual context.

Historically, text NOTAMs were notoriously painful to go through, often burying dispatchers and pilots. Visualizing active closures and constraints directly on map layers represents a major leap forward.

Really, the addition of the Smart NOTAMs, the Graphical NOTAMs, that’s a huge win. Being able to see what’s active, what’s not active, how it impacts the airport operation. I really, really love that feature.”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

4. Slashing training hours from 8+ hours to 30 minutes

Beyond desk efficiency, legacy software presented a major burden to corporate training departments. Because legacy systems allowed infinite manual interface customization, instructors had to spend hours teaching trainees how to build custom map views, configure color themes, and set up desktop profiles from scratch.

Something that doesn’t get talked about often is the load on training. I think you could set somebody up with Maverick, get them going in a half an hour. Last week I taught Fusion for our new hires, and I spent four hours going through everything and we weren’t done — they needed four more. With this system, I think you can give them everything they need in a lot less time, so that load is a lot better.”

Ken McNaught, Dispatch Manager

Horizon Air

By standardizing map elements and removing legacy setup complexity, training shifts away from software management to operational decision-making.

It’s the reduction of training time… Going back to that Apple product type initiative: keep it simple and then just be really good at it, right? The time of training has gone down substantially. It’s really just get in and play with it. You’re not going to break it. And that’s pretty much how training goes now.”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

5. Customization vs. standardization: Finding the product sweet spot

The conversation around training led directly into a debate about software customization. Is infinite customizability a feature or a flaw?

Representatives from our product team, including myself, joined the discussion, explaining that Maverick intentionally dialed back user preferences to avoid the visual confusion common in legacy tools — where two dispatchers sitting side-by-side might look at wildly different interfaces.

I touched on why we made specific design choices for Maverick early on. We intentionally put less customization into Maverick to start because we heard that often when you’re looking at Fusion, it sometimes looks like different applications between different dispatchers and it’s hard to visually look over someone’s shoulder or take something over. From a product perspective, I did want to tone back some of the customization just because it was getting unwieldy at times.

The airline panelists largely supported this standardized, out-of-the-box design:

I’m kind of in favor of the less customization, to be honest with you. It’s really worked out well. While Fusion’s training problems came from so much customization leading to an additional eight hours of training, here it’s out of the box, pretty simple, straightforward. You want to change the base map? Great, here are the two options. You don’t need anything else.”

Ken McNaught, Dispatch Manager

Horizon Air

Another panelist put a fine, humorous point on why retiring infinite color palettes is a welcome change:

Gone are the days of the pink map with the lime-green airplanes. So that’s okay!”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

6. Agile sprints and rapid innovation

In enterprise aviation, vendor relationships have historically been slow and rigid, with minor software enhancements taking years to deploy. The panel cited The Weather Company’s agile development cadence — featuring bi-weekly development sprints and direct customer input—as a standout differentiator.

Speed of innovation — it’s so critical in today’s age that we innovate and iterate quickly… and that’s attributed to the speed in which you guys have been able to develop and put to market all of the ideas that we’ve been bringing to you.”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

Expanding on that collaborative dynamic, Garrett emphasized the value of having a vendor that actively listens:

It’s one of the vendors that I actually go to and I trust that when I say, ‘Hey, this is a problem, can we fix it?’, something is actually going to be done. I’m not talking to a wall like I am with 90% of my vendors, where I’m just a number… Working with this team has been nothing short of exceptional. It’s awesome to look at the product and see fingerprints from each one of us.”

Garrett Urry, Senior Manager, Flight Dispatch

Breeze Airways

Co-creating the future of aviation tech

The lively debate and honest feedback shared during the Maverick Dispatch Panel highlighted what makes The Weather Company’s annual Aviation Conference so vital. It isn’t just a venue to showcase software — it’s a collaborative forum where flight operations leaders actively shape the tools they rely on every day.

As web-native technology, 3D weather visualizations, and real-time surface tracking continue to mature, the shift away from legacy platforms is accelerating. The breakthroughs shared at this year’s conference prove that when software development moves at the speed of airline operations, the entire industry benefits.

Let's talk

To learn more about how Maverick Dispatch can reduce cognitive load and streamline training across your flight operations desk, contact our aviation experts today.