SITA
From a 3-month MVP to part of Mission Watch
A real-time communication app for airline operations that started as a short contract and became part of SITA's flagship platform.
Context
SITA is the IT and communications backbone of the air transport industry. Mission Watch, its flight-tracking and dispatch platform, is used by 65+ airlines and 3,500+ dispatchers.
Airline operations teams needed to talk to each other in real time, in the context of a specific flight, on networks that drop constantly inside airports.
What I did
- Architected and delivered the MVP in 3 months in a team of three: chat plus WebRTC audio and video calls on Matrix, with a self-hosted Synapse server, first as a React Native app, then demoed to the pilot airline's leadership.
- After the MVP's success, rebuilt it as an Angular PWA and integrated it into Mission Watch: selecting a flight on the map opens its conversation, and flight alerts appear as automatic messages.
- Built an offline send queue for unstable airport networks: messages show a “sending…” state and go out in their original order when the connection returns.
- Built other Mission Watch features in a 20+ person team: a virtualized flight weather table, flight replay on the map (position, trajectory and fuel at any moment) and diversion management.
- Changed how dev and QA worked together: short review calls instead of ticket ping-pong, and a 95% test-coverage gate on every PR, backed by AI-assisted Playwright tests.
Outcome
- A 4-month engagement became a long-term one.
- The communication app is now offered to airlines as part of Mission Watch.