One of the hardest aspects of a merger is making the IT systems of the merging companies talk with each other. That problem grows in magnitude when you are talking about merging airlines, Continental and United Airlines. While the ticketing conversion worked well, the distinctness of the air traffic tracking systems made the conversion problematic. So when the company decided that United’s system was more suitable for the merged airline, it needed to test it. How would you design an experiment to see if your tracking system could know where flights were, what their arrival times and departure times were, what the flight numbers were, and whether they deviated from their flight plan?