The Product Experience (Mind the Product)
Building Products for Pilots: A Case Study - Cristina Bustos (Swiss AviationSoftware)
The Product Experience (Mind the Product)
•January 21, 2026•33 min
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The Product Experience (Mind the Product)•Jan 21, 2026
Why It Matters
The conversation highlights how product teams can navigate complex regulatory environments while delivering innovative digital solutions, a lesson applicable to any industry facing strict compliance. Understanding Cristina's approach to stakeholder alignment, workflow redesign, and disciplined iteration offers valuable insights for product managers aiming to launch high‑stakes products quickly and safely.
Key Takeaways
- •Securing funding customers early drove product development commitment.
- •Integrated decision‑making workshops aligned multiple airlines and regulators.
- •Pilot involvement from concept ensured realistic digital cockpit design.
- •Real‑time data replaced paper, improving maintenance turnaround.
- •Over‑ambitious scope caused delays; focus on core features essential.
Pulse Analysis
The episode follows Cristina Bustos, product manager at Swiss Aviation Software, as she recounts the launch of the company’s first native mobile application for pilots. Initiated during the COVID‑19 pandemic, the project faced a uniquely tough road‑to‑market: it had to satisfy airline customers, aircraft mechanics, and stringent European aviation regulators simultaneously. Transforming a paper‑based workflow into a digital cockpit solution required not only new technology but also a deep understanding of flight operations, data latency, and safety standards. Bustos emphasizes that without early commitment from funding customers, the initiative could not have progressed beyond the concept stage.
To secure that commitment, the team leveraged high‑fidelity prototypes and a rigorous validation process. They organized integrated decision‑making workshops, splitting participants into streams for pilots, cabin crew, mechanics, and quality departments. Each stream followed a proposal‑clarify‑vote cycle, culminating in a unified decision presented to regulators. Crucially, a captain was recruited during the lockdown to co‑create the user experience, ensuring the digital interface matched real‑world flight phases. The resulting system delivers real‑time data to both cockpit and ground crew, eliminating the nine‑hour lag of paper forms and enabling mechanics to prepare parts before aircraft land.
The journey also revealed common pitfalls. Pursuing too many features at once led to missed deadlines and technical debt, even when a hackathon accelerated prototype work. Bustos advises future product teams to limit scope, prioritize mandatory regulatory requirements, and maintain continuous stakeholder feedback. Early regulator involvement and parallel shadow‑flight testing proved essential for obtaining a non‑technical objection letter from European authorities. By focusing on core functionality and iterating with pilots and mechanics, the team turned a complex, multi‑stakeholder challenge into a viable digital solution that modernizes aviation maintenance workflows.
Episode Description
In this episode of The Product Experience, host Randy Silver talks with Cristina Bustos, Product Manager and team lead at Swiss AviationSoftware, about her experience launching a native mobile application in one of the most regulated and high‑stakes industries in the world: commercial aviation.
Cristina recounts how she moved from business analysis into product leadership and then navigated a gruelling product development process during the pandemic. Her team faced the dual challenge of winning over both paying customers and aviation regulators to replace paper‑based cockpit workflows with a real‑time digital solution.
Chapters
0:00 | Introduction and personal background
2:34 | Problem framing: launching a mobile app in aviation
4:00 | Winning founding customers before building code
6:10 | Consensus across customers and regulators
9:00 | Involving actual pilots in design
10:00 | Redesigning workflow not just digitising it
14:15 | Scope control and prioritisation
17:16 | Regulatory engagement and approval strategy
19:49 | A hackathon that wasn’t a silver bullet
21:06 | Reflections: what she would do differently
25:22 | Balancing iteration with regulatory discipline
28:21 | Triple validate in the real world
29:53 | Signals of success and business impact
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
Show Notes
In this episode of The Product Experience, host Randy Silver talks with Cristina Bustos, Product Manager and team lead at Swiss AviationSoftware, about her experience launching a native mobile application in one of the most regulated and high‑stakes industries in the world: commercial aviation.
Cristina recounts how she moved from business analysis into product leadership and then navigated a gruelling product development process during the pandemic. Her team faced the dual challenge of winning over both paying customers and aviation regulators to replace paper‑based cockpit workflows with a real‑time digital solution.
Chapters
0:00 | Introduction and personal background
2:34 | Problem framing: launching a mobile app in aviation
4:00 | Winning founding customers before building code
6:10 | Consensus across customers and regulators
9:00 | Involving actual pilots in design
10:00 | Redesigning workflow not just digitising it
14:15 | Scope control and prioritisation
17:16 | Regulatory engagement and approval strategy
19:49 | A hackathon that wasn’t a silver bullet
21:06 | Reflections: what she would do differently
25:22 | Balancing iteration with regulatory discipline
28:21 | Triple validate in the real world
29:53 | Signals of success and business impact
**Our Hosts
Lily Smith** enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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