Dropping EDS seems like a reasonable idea if they can find someone who has the skills to recruit a decent programming staff. Continental certainly isn't a software company and I doubt there are many people with that background there. It can be pretty hard to hire and maintain a good programing staff if you don't have someone to make those choices.

Improving the usability of all the systems the agents user (gate agents, phone agents, etc) would do wonders for their customer service. Nobody likes to wait while an agent spends 20 minutes navigating the system to make changes. Investing in making the systems more user-friendly will have extreme long term payoff in efficiency and customer service areas.