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Microsoft's Surface 2 will replace paper manuals on all Delta aircraft
- codex 13y agoiPad's been doing this for years; what's the news? Deep discounts for a design win?
- FireBeyond 13y agoRight - where by 'for years' you mean "was approved for Flight Deck use by the FAA at the end of 2011?
- JimmaDaRustla 13y ago"They've been doing it for year!"
- rinon 13y agoAnd when the tablet crashes and won't boot up? Sounds like a safety issue to me...
- ZanyProgrammer 13y agoNo more of a safety issue than using iPads.
- XorNot 13y agoWhich seems like equally a bad idea unless you've got the paper manuals right there as well.
- waterside81 13y agoLet's give Delta the benefit of the doubt here and assume the paper copies will still be on board, but the primary source will be the Surface 2.
- freehunter 13y agoThe article mentions the cost savings from replacing the very heavy manuals, so I would assume not.
- tedunangst 13y agoOne paper copy per plane instead of one per pilot? Thinner, less durable paper that doesn't have to survive daily use? Guessing.
- Tloewald 13y agoLet's say instead of 40 lbs of books they carry 2 tablets (3lbs). If I needed to look up a phone number and had a choice of a tablet or a paper phonebook, and the tablet crashed... I'd wait for the tablet to reboot and look it up on the tablet.
- programminggeek 13y agoWhat's funny is Microsoft likely had to give Delta a steep discount just to get this PR win. With the iPad, companies will use it because it's a great product that people want to use, so they use it. I guess Microsoft will do what it has to do to get someone to use the Surface 2.
- unethical_ban 13y agoiPad has momentum Surface doesn't. We'll see how the surface 2 comes along.
- ecspike 13y agoAnd I bet it was also part of the deal that they had to split up the announcement of the Nokia Lumia deal for the flight attendants and this one to get maximum press cycles.
- xenophanes 13y agoYep you called it. See: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fought-against-deal-to-replace-ipad-flight-bags-with-microsoft-surface http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fough... > "We fought hard for iPad," a pilot working for the airline told AppleInsider. He described the Delta deal as being about money, travel contracts, and Delta's Information Technology staff historically being "in bed" with Microsoft. Read the rest of the article. It gets worse.
- protomyth 13y agoAnd here we see why Steve Jobs said at the D conference didn't like selling to companies. Microsoft is still very, very good at corporate sales.
- bicknergseng 13y agoI don't know... a single, anonymous pilot's 6 word quote followed by a lot of editorial in Apple Insider. It's not like Apple hasn't done plenty of loss leaders.
- nivla 13y agoInteresting but I am not sure if it is a good idea replacing paper manuals with electronic devices. How useful are these manuals during an emergency? What if the device starts glitching or is low on battery? How much interference can these devices cause, given the current rule is to switch off all electronic devices during takeoff and landing? Would they be put on "Airplane Mode"?
- Scorponok 13y agoI read on the recent story about FAA regulations that current cockpit iPads are on all the time during takeoff and landing, although I suspect they'll be in airplane mode whenever they're on the plane. Presumably in case of an emergency, the pilot would always be able to call the control tower to confirm whatever details, even if their tablet was dead, so I don't think it would be a major issue.
- PeterisP 13y ago1) I believe that finding anything on a digital device is quicker in an emergency than looking it up on 38 pound pile of paper; 2) To prevent failures, take a redundant secondary device (anyways, each co-pilot would/should have one). 3) "Airplane mode" would be perfectly fine, as the device should store all manuals locally anyways, and need a connection only to be updated with newest content. Personally, I'd say that something like a Kindle would be better than the Surface for this particular task.
- veemjeem 13y agoI hope you mean kindle fire, because the base kindle would be too slow to anyone to quickly flip through the pages.
- djt 13y agoDevices don't cause much interference with these machines, same as hospitals. Doctors always have their phones on. Within about 1 metre might cause some interference. Maybe. I heard that the reason they tell you to turn it off in flight is so that if something goes wrong people panic less. Not sure how true that is though.
- WalterBright 13y agoI don't know why this isn't integrated into the instrument panel. That way, it's always there, always ready to go, and isn't going to bounce around the cockpit.
- tedunangst 13y agoAre regulations more stringent for things that are attached or built into the aircraft?
- wcarey 13y agoThings that get integrated into the cockpit tend to be hard to change and have long legacy lifetimes. If you ever want to gouge your eyes out for an evening, peruse the spec for CADRG, which is the file format used by military cockpit in flight displays: http://earth-info.nga.mil/publications/specs/printed/89038/89038_CADRG.pdf http://earth-info.nga.mil/publications/specs/printed/89038/8... It's a format designed for ultra-fast decoding, but it's not widely supported and a real mess under the hood. There's some advantage to having things in the pilots hands if the technology is improving rapidly.
- aqme28 13y agoIf there's any chance you'll be dealing with problems more than a foot away from the instrument panel, you'll want a manual you can carry around.
- WalterBright 13y agoI know with books in my car, I have to always search for them. They wind up everywhere - in the glove box, under the seat, in the way of the pedals, etc. Then, there's "oops, I forgot to bring it", "I forgot to bring the charger cable", where is the danged charger cable, the charger cable gets in the way, etc. And, airliners can sometimes be involved in fairly violent maneuvers, including upside down. To you really want to be hit in the head by a tablet? Lastly, most of the size & weight of a tablet is the battery. Putting it in the instrument panel dispenses with that.
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- film42 13y agoSo as it turns out, many airline companies are switching to tablets. My girlfriend's father is a pilot for South West and currently in their beta program. He used to carry 10LBs of binders in a big leather briefcase, but that's all been moved onto the ipad. He loves it!
- NathanKP 13y agoInterestingly Delta was supposedly testing iPads for use inflight instead of paper manuals back in 2011. [1] I wonder why they are going with the Surface now? The US Air Force [2] and American Airlines [3] are both using iPads. I'd be really interested in seeing why Delta decided to go with the Surface, unless it is something as simple as Microsoft is giving Delta a massive discount in exchange for the PR boost to try to catch up with the iPads adoption by other airlines and by the army. [1] http://www.padgadget.com/2011/03/07/delta-air-lines-alaska-airlines-testing-ipad-as-in-cockpit-flight-tool/ http://www.padgadget.com/2011/03/07/delta-air-lines-alaska-a... [2] http://www.geekwire.com/2013/air-force-deploying-18000-ipads-replace-bulky-paper-flight-manuals/ http://www.geekwire.com/2013/air-force-deploying-18000-ipads... [3] http://www.dailytech.com/American+Airlines+Wins+FAA+Approval+to+Use+iPad+in+Cockpit+During+All+Phases+of+Flight/article27646.htm http://www.dailytech.com/American+Airlines+Wins+FAA+Approval... Edit: Another comment linked to an Apple Insider article which says that the Surface deal was "about money, travel contracts, and Delta's Information Technology staff historically being "in bed" with Microsoft." http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fought-against-deal-to-replace-ipad-flight-bags-with-microsoft-surface http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fough...
- jamesbritt 13y agoInterestingly Delta was supposedly testing iPads for use inflight instead of paper manuals back in 2011. I believe that at the time the iPad was the only FAA-approved Electronic Flight Bag.
- cgore 13y agoI worked on this one for a little while: http://www.astronautics.com/index.php?q=content/electronic-flight-bag http://www.astronautics.com/index.php?q=content/electronic-f... I have trouble imagining either the iPad or the Surface being used for anything critical.
- mey 13y agoThis appears to be the software doing all the work http://ww1.jeppesen.com/aviation/products/flitedeck-pro/index.jsp http://ww1.jeppesen.com/aviation/products/flitedeck-pro/inde... Which is available for both iOS and Windows.
- javajosh 13y agoWell, at least MSFT finally found somewhere to put all those unpurchased Surfi.
- taspeotis 13y ago> javajosh 4 minutes ago | link | parent | flag > Well, at least MSFT finally found somewhere to put all those unpurchased Surfi All those unsold Surface 1 tablets? > Microsoft's Surface 2 will replace paper manuals on all Delta aircraft Pray tell where those unsold Surface 1 tablets are going.
- CamperBob2 13y agoI imagine they'll be buried in the desert next to all those CueCats, Atari 'E.T.' cartridges, and assorted drums of low-level nuclear waste.
- epochwolf 13y agoDelta Connection flights?
- rch 13y agoWhy not use something based on an e-ink display?
- Tloewald 13y agoWild guess: color support.
- tn13 13y agoDid some ex-microsoft executive joined Delta as CEO ?
- geophile 13y agoSerious question, as I haven't used Windows in years: How reliable are these things (the current generation of Surface)? On an aircraft, a BSOD could have a literal meaning.
- Encosia 13y agoJust my n=1, but I think I've only had one BSOD since Windows 7 came out (and literally none running Vista, before that, for what it's worth). I have a Surface RT and Pro also, and neither of those have ever crashed. I saw a screenshot of the new Windows 8 BSOD somewhere a while back, but I've never seen it myself even though I run it on several devices.
- drivebyacct2 13y agoI've never, ever had a BSOD on Windows 7 or greater. I've only witnessed one and it was on an old (physically) dying laptop.
- ps4fanboy 13y agomy ipad crashes more than my windows desktop
- dangrossman 13y agoWindows itself virtually never crashes. The only thing that'll cause a 2005+ system to crash is hardware failure, or a hardware driver failure/bug. I have a 2010 laptop I use daily that's not once BSOD'd. My Surface Pro has never BSOD'd. My older desktop has, but the message has always been related to the graphics driver, and I sometimes have to reseat the card to get it to boot, so it's probably a physical world problem.
- MichaelGG 13y agoAnd in fact, with Vista/7 they changed the way the graphic drivers work. I've had my GPU card crash several times, and all I got was a blank screen for a few seconds, followed by a notice that the video driver died and restarted. Sometimes it might flip into "basic" mode after that. Before, such a problem would have been a BSOD.
- nostromo 13y agoDo they have to turn it off during takeoff and landing?
- yaeger 13y agoArticle talks about its usage during "all phases of flight" so I guess they will use it all the time.
- delinka 13y agoReplacing flight bags with tablets is a prime use case for technology. Eliminate the weight, the replacement pages, the distribution expense. Push digital documents and poof pilots have the latest data.
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoI think everyone is over-thinking this: Delta probably received bids with some simple requirements (screen size, resolution, PDF/document capabilities, battery life, etc.) Microsoft strikes discounted price deal coupling it as a marketing opportunity. Why WOULDN'T Delta use the Surface if they can get it for significantly cheaper than other alternatives, plus it still has the ability to be expanded in the future (automatically file syncing, user permissions, communication, etc.)