I graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University wanting to be an Airline Pilot when I grew up. Hearing & Blood Pressure problems led to my losing my Flight Medical Certificate so I ended up parking cars for a Valet service under contract w/American Airlines.

It got my foot in the door. I started AA as a Gate Agent. My flight background got me a transfer to Load Control (weight & balance planning). From there I went into Operations which over the years was Ramp Control, Gate (assignment) Planner and a few other various things...all at DFW.

After several years of rotaing back and forth between the gates and ops, I took a management job at System Operations Control (Dispatch office) as a Navigation Database Analyst. That job dealt a lot with the computer ... and I was approached by the company to learn to become programmer.

So off I went to programming school. I ended up becoming the Tech Lead for the Flight Planning System. That position was with AA when I started it, but was then regrouped into Sabre which AA eventually sold. The new Sabre wanted to be a "dot com" and could care less about the mainframe computer, so we were outsourced to EDS. EDS doesn't like to actually do any IT work, they just want to "consult" and send the actual work overseas. The layoffs were almost monthly. Our workgroup was down from 80 prograqmmers to about 15 when I found programming work with another company.

Tho my paycheck stopped saying "AA" 2 years before I left, I always considered myself an AA employee until I resigned from EDS (my employee number and seniority date stayed the same all along). I left 6 months shy of my 20th year.

Steve