Building products for pilots: a case study - Cristina Bustos (Swiss AviationSoftware)

Jan 21, 2026

Cristina Bustos, Product Manager at Swiss AviationSoftware, shares her journey from business analyst to leading the development of a mobile cockpit app in the aviation sector. She discusses the unique challenges of replacing traditional workflows with a digital solution during the pandemic. Cristina emphasizes the importance of engaging pilots for effective design and the necessity of aligning with customers and regulators through integrative decision-making. She reflects on the delicate balance between agility and regulatory discipline while achieving operational improvements that extend beyond simply removing paperwork.

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ADVICE

Get Paying Founders With Prototypes

Use high‑fidelity prototypes to secure paying founding customers before writing code.
Validate concepts with customers and regulators to win funding and commitment early.

ADVICE

Structure Workshops To Build Consensus

Run integrative decision‑making workshops to reach cross‑company consensus.
Structure streams for pilots, quality, mechanics and regulators, then surface objections and vote.

ANECDOTE

Hire Real Pilots To Co‑Create

Cristina required participating airlines to bring real pilots into the co‑creation process.
She hired an actual captain during COVID to validate and present the concept to skeptical pilots.

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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.