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Delta Replacing Flight Manuals with Surface Tablets
Frosty Piss writes "Delta Air Lines plans to buy 11,000 Microsoft Surface 2 tablets for its pilots to replace the heavy bundles of books and maps they haul around now. Delta says the Surface tablets will save it $13 million per year in fuel and other costs. Right now, each pilot carries a 38-pound flight bag with manuals and maps. Other airlines, including American and United, have been buying Apple's iPad for that purpose. One reason Delta picked a Microsoft device was that it's easier to give pilots separate sections for company and personal use, said Steve Dickson, Delta's senior vice president for flight operations. Another reason for picking the Surface tablet is that Delta's training software also runs on the same Windows operating system as the tablets, reducing the need to redo that software for another device, Dickson said."
Here in AMC (Air Mobility Command, USAF) we use the iPad with an OtterBox case. Hope there is a tough case for the Surface, because even is a nice jet like the C-17, these things take a beating.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Considering the pilots fought to keep the iPads and didn't want Surface, there's more going on behind the scene here.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fought-against-deal-to-replace-ipad-flight-bags-with-microsoft-surface
Now MS has sold 11,023 tablets!
I can tell you, I hate Microsoft for both rational and irrational reasons. But there is one area that Microsoft beats out the competition, and that is backwards compatibility. If you want to write software that will still run in 10 years, then choosing carefully among Microsoft technologies is a decent way to do that. So if I were Delta, and were deciding whether to do this on iPads or Window Tablets, I would also choose the Windows Tablet, because Apple has demonstrated they have no longterm (or medium term) commitment to backwards compatibility. That is especially true since they already have a codebase set up to run on Windows. Remember that the tablets themselves are likely the cheapest part of this whole operation.
The best would be Linux tablets, because then you can own the whole software stack. The only drawback is the UI situation on Linux........
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My understanding* is that many airlines are doing this, and the flight critical standard and emergency check-lists are still kept in hard copy. The material no longer on paper will be things like approach maps for a few hundred airports, and manuals for seldom-adjusted aircraft systems. Should such documents be required but unavailable due to misfunctioning tablets, air traffic controllers and the airline's dispatch centre would be able to assist by radio.
If there is a real pilot in the house, perhaps they could comment further.
* I am a non-pilot with an interest in aviation, so I try to follow such developments via internet news sites.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
And in two years, once the Surface 2 gets certified, what happens? Delta is now flying with 2 year old technology... whoopie.
If two years scares you, I pray you NEVER look at the age of some of the flight electronics in the cockpit. Some of those designs and products are over two decades old!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Considering they bought the ARM version of the tablet, someone's going to be very disappointed (and probably in a lot of trouble) when they discover that it does not run the same operating system as their training software. At least not unless their training software only runs on an extremely limited number of low-power computers.
Good news is, Microsoft's deception campaign to trick people expecting to run Windows apps into buying their ARM OS is working.
Pretty much my line of thinking. Whilst in theory, iOS devices are also breakable, the comparison for instances of malware for the two platforms is night and day.
Also, by default, on iOS, all applications are sandboxed. Whilst this may be true for metro apps on Windows 8, it most certainly is NOT true for non-metro applications.
But in any case, I'd seriously suggest not running personal software on a device such as this irrespective of that. For a device in this role, I'd be locking it down tighter than fish's arse-hole - to the point where "personal use" beyond access to the corporate e-mail system would be pretty much impossible anyway.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
TFA says they're buying Surface 2 tablets, not Surface Pro 2. Which use ARM processors. Which cannot run malware designed for x86. Which mostly invalidates your argument.
You needn't worry - these are Surface tablets.
The flight crews have no interest in using them for anything personal.
#DeleteChrome