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This is the white paper I wrote for the 3rd edition of the Aircraft IT Flight Operations eJournal in Autumn 2011
Citation preview
10 | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | AUTUMN 2011
Tablets in Flight OperationsAre tablets, asks Paul Saunders, Operations Director at Conduce Consulting, a Technology fashion
trend or a permanent solution?
SINCE THE LAUNCH of the iPad 2 in
March 2011, you may have heard the
words ‘post-PC’ used quite a lot. Indeed these words
appear in nearly all Apple Inc. marketing blurb, e.g....
“We are approaching a post-PC era.”
“�e majority of our revenue now comes from post-
PC devices.”
“We are living in a post-PC world.”
�e idea of a world without PCs is debated ‘ad-
nauseum’ in tech blogs and journals. Analysis of
PC and laptop sales certainly indicates that there is
a major shi� underway. It is clear that the netbook
appears to have had its day, analysts are revising
their predictions downwards for the growth of
desktop PC sales and the demand for certain
tablets completely outstrips supply. Not all tablets
though… the Blackberry Playbook is a half-baked
�op having only shipped to date the quantity that
the iPad sells in 48 hours whilst HP’s abandonment
of WebOS has le� TouchPad owners with an
expensive rectangular Frisbee.
Despite Microso� seemingly hedging their bets
with a mobile and tablet friendly new operating
AUTUMN 2011 | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | 11
system in the shape of Windows 8 on the horizon,
I tend to think that we are not going to see an
end to PCs and speci!cally laptops for a while
yet… having said that, !ve years is an in!nity in
technology terms. If Microso�, ‘defenders of the
faith’ for PCs, are preparing for a possible decline
in PC sales then you’d better believe that a change
is coming. What is certain is that interest in tablets,
and especially the iPad, in the Flight Operations
arena is very high indeed. I mean, the fact that
you’re reading this paper indicates something doesn’t
it? Dozens of airlines across the world are either
evaluating tablets, building business cases, piloting
tablet use or have rolled out tablets in a limited
form. I’ve not seen a paradigm shi� like this in
aviation IT since the late nineties with the mass
adoption of email and the internet. Are tablets a
passing fad, or do they represent a viable long term
technology solution for Operations IT?
A recent study suggested that 92% of Fortune
500 companies in the USA are either deploying
or piloting iPads. Whilst presenting during the
Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT
Conference at Darmstadt in July this year I posed
the question to delegates “how many of you are
currently deploying or piloting tablet devices?”
Although highly unscienti!c I was interested to see
that approximately 25% of the audience raised their
hands. Anecdotally I know that many airlines are
making initial steps to roll out tablet devices for
a variety of use cases. �ere is trepidation though
largely due to the lack of appropriate useful and
connected apps. Some people seem to be waiting for
the tablet market to stabilize before committing to
a particular hardware, so�ware or operating system
choice under the belief that the wrong decision at
such an early stage in the market life cycle could
lead to a failed return on investment, or worse, a
complete waste of time and money. Even innovators
and early adopters are proceeding with real caution.
I can’t point to a single airline that has yet fully
rolled out an entire mobile IT landscape which
includes tablets, complete with a full suite of apps
and connected systems. Even the most advanced
innovators such as Alaska Airlines have built a
business case for investment based on a tightly
focused set of functions where they have simply
replaced paper �ight manuals with PDF versions of
the same documents. Presumably a broader vision
which includes a complete Electronic Flight Bag
(EFB) and a full set of connected business apps will
come at a later time. Other early adopters, such
as United Continental, Delta and BA are wisely
following a similar path.
So why aren’t we seeing a bolder and more rapid
adoption of the sort of mind blowing, awesome apps
and hardware that we use at home or for generic
business purposes? Where is the killer app that is
going to radically change aviation in the same way
that Angry Birds radically changed the way that we
waste our time?
OK, so imagine you’re the CIO for an airline
wanting to build a business case for the deployment
of tablets for your �ight and cabin crew.
Actual airline CIOs wanting to build such a
business case should take notes. Let’s assume for a
moment that we’ve already made a decision about
which hardware we’re going to buy. Let’s also assume
that I’ve got a fantastic deal for the bulk purchase
of my devices. We should further take for granted
that we have managed to convince IT that this is
a worthwhile pursuit and that I’ve made all of the
necessary assurances that they going to be given
adequate resources to support the vast expansion of
their support network and capability requirements.
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12 | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | AUTUMN 2011
Now what?
Obviously, I need to decide on the functions for
which we will be using tablets. �at should be easy
right? We’ve all seen the adverts about how tablets
will revolutionize our lives. We’re going to be ultra-
connected with simple yet sophisticated so�ware
that will connect to and from anything, which
means we can do anything for which we used to
have to be in the o"ce, but at any time of the day
or night from anywhere in the world.
Right?
Wrong!
OK, maybe if my job involves reading magazines,
video-conferencing with my grandchildren, watching
videos, sending emails, writing articles for my blog
and that I work from my local co$ee shop equipped
with perfect Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, as seems to
the case for the tablet users on the TV adverts, then
yes, that’s all possible.
However, the current crop of tablet devices and
most speci!cally the iPad were designed purely as
consumer devices, not business devices. �e tablet
market as we know it today is not even 18 months
old and the business sector has barely started to
bridge the gap that the consumer market has le� in
its wake. If you are expecting to !nd a bewildering
array of so�ware choices for aviation when you
log on to any app store, then you have a rude
awakening. Today, there are very few tablet apps
that have been speci!cally designed and developed
for the commercial aviation sector. Of the !rst
100,000 apps that were launched for the iPad, less
than 4% are aimed at business and there are only a
tiny handful of those apps that are readily available
to be purchased and used for my imaginary airline
business case. Furthermore, of the pitiful number
of commercial aviation targeted apps, there is
nothing available that isn’t already o$ered on other
platforms. In aviation we simply don’t see the mind
blowing, plentiful and cheap innovation that we
have seen for other consumer markets.
Why is this?
First of all, it’s very hard to make money
developing and selling mobile apps to aviation. �e
prospect of developing an app for what is a limited
aviation market that has a mine!eld of regulatory
approvals to negotiate is simply too big a risk for
most independent technologists to even consider.
Compare the aviation app market to the consumer
app market and I know where I’d be committing
my talent if I were a young developer looking to
make my fortune in so�ware development. �e
so�ware engineers of tomorrow aspire to become
successful by developing the next Angry Birds or
the next social media craze, which technically is a
fair bit simpler than writing something as complex
and sophisticated as a crew rostering system. Why
would you spend months writing an app for such
a limited market that you then have to spend time
actively selling and marketing to airlines that have
existing legacy solutions to the speci!c problem that
you have solved with your app, when you can spend
two nights making a sound board app for the latest
comedy catch phrase, put it on the app store for 99
cents and watch the cash roll in.
Consider the developers of GoodReader, a !ve
dollar PDF reading app that synchronizes with a
web facing !le repository. �is app was purchased
by Alaska Airlines and rolled out to the iPads
purchased for their pilots to help replace the paper
�ight manuals that they had been hauling around
since time immemorial. Assuming that Alaska
Airlines has 1400 �ight crew; this works out that,
a�er Apple’s 30% cut, GoodReader’s revenue for this
gig was a staggering $5,000.
Cue, ironic cheers.
Secondly, it is very hard indeed to change
platforms and retro!t a tablet or mobile enabled
front end to your existing aviation so�ware product.
Focusing, for a moment, on developing for Apple’s
iOS iPad and iPhone platform, there are a couple of
pre-requisites that you will need.
To develop for the iPad you will need an
Apple Mac and an iPad, plus Apple’s So�ware
Development Kit which will set you back $99 a
year. No big deal I hear you say…. For around
$3000 that’s you tooled up for one developer. One
other small but signi!cant investment you will need
to make is around $15 on a book like ‘Objective
C for Dummies’. Your existing developers may
well be pro!cient in a number of programming
languages such as Java or one of the various �avors
of C, but unless they have already been exposed
to Objective-C which is the proprietary language
used to develop for iPhone and iPad, then there is
an awful lot of unlearning and relearning that your
developers will need to go through. Objective-C is
a completely di$erent beast from any programming
language in which most modern aviation so�ware
products are written. Cross platform support and
reskilling for some of the latest generation tablet
and mobile devices is a major undertaking for any
AUTUMN 2011 | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | 13
so�ware vendor and should not be underestimated. �is factor
alone may account for the forecasted success of more familiar
programming platforms such as Android, Windows and HTML5.
Consider also the amount of e$ort needed to retool an existing
aviation so�ware system for use in a mobile tablet environment.
Most of the enterprise level aviation so�ware packages that we
use today have occupied hundreds of thousands of man-hours
of development and contain millions of lines of code. Even the
most up-to-date systems are likely to be based on a technical
architecture that pre-dates some of the modern techniques and
procedures that would preclude a near-total rewrite to bolt on
a tablet user interface. I have seen at !rst-hand the draining
of color from the cheeks of so�ware vendor CTOs and CEOs
with the shock of realization at just how much resource they are
going to have to sink into a major rewrite just to provide today’s
technology buyers with something they are growing to expect –
their so�ware available on a free iPad app.
Lastly, the general lack of openness in the aviation industry is a
major barrier to innovation. From an outsider’s perspective there
is a laughable level of opposition to and anxiety about the idea
of open and semantic data, open architecture and open source
technology compared to equivalent industries. �is antiquated
attitude to protection of data and intellectual property in aviation
by airlines, MROs and so�ware vendors alike is preventing
independent technologists from innovating and extending the
capabilities of existing so�ware. Instead talented developers are
turning their attention to building cheap, simple but lucrative
add-ins for social media platforms which tend to have a potential
market size measured in millions of users, not thousands.
�ese factors combined mean that o�en there is no alternative
but to directly commission your own suite of apps. I do not
foresee this situation changing in a hurry. It is going to take many
CLICK HERE FOR FULL SOFTWARE DETAILS AND FOR A DEMO
14 | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | AUTUMN 2011
months, or even years in some cases, for so�ware vendors to
catch up with user demand and release tablet apps of their own or
APIs to allow third parties to easily develop apps. With a meager
selection of commercial aviation apps on o$er, for what purposes
should we be thinking about using tablets in Operations IT? To
answer this question I believe that we have to refer back to what
the latest tablet devices were originally designed for and translate
the intended use cases for the consumer market to our industry
and their potential applications in �ight operations.
�e iPad and the majority of the latest Android tablet devices
were designed speci!cally for the consumer market and operate
best as a means to consume media, for internet browsing, for
reading and for staying connected through smart working (using
email and other productivity apps). Choosing the best business
applications for tablets involves translating those device strengths
into practical use cases. Doing so in the typical �ight operations
environment poses a number of speci!c challenges due to the
environmental constraints. Right now most operators have
restricted, at best, or zero communications in �ight and potentially
limited connectivity on the ground. We may also have to rely
entirely on a single battery charge for the duration of a �ight and
beyond. Having said that, certain tablet characteristics are well
suited to �ight operations making them seemingly a more suitable
device compared to existing EFBs and other devices which have
gone before. Most tablets really do have an all-day battery life. I
use an iPad, and this device can go days on end without the need
to be charged. Even with continuous use, the batteries should last
a full working day with no problem. Today’s tablets are lighter,
smaller and more easily stowed than a laptop, a netbook or other
equivalent devices. �ey are also amongst the most desirable
items on the technology market today and this, for me, is a vital
factor when it comes to usability and user adoption.
Let’s take it for granted that users will be working smarter using
tablets through the usual suite of productivity apps, such as email,
calendar, to-do lists, and o"ce apps hooked in to cloud based
document storage. �at’s pretty obvious and each airline and
individual will have their favored methods of working here, as the
concept of remote working for �ight and cabin crew is already
well established for many airlines.
�e next most obvious application for tablets, which most early
adopting airlines have used as their primary business case driver,
is technical publications. For most airlines it should be a fairly routine and
cost saving exercise to convert the current distribution of paper manuals to an
electronic distribution of PDF documents saving ample time for pilots, crew
and technical librarians alike. Cutting down on crew admin time to receive and
incorporate manuals into their already heavy �ight bags has a double e$ect on
productivity. Saving time that pilots and crew, in the crew room, spend fa"ng
around with manual revisions not only increases their productivity, but reduces
the number of duty hours that they consume. A saving in the order of minutes
per crew member per month soon factors up to a decent return on investment
over a span of years. Some airlines have factored the reduction of the weight
of paper being brought on board into their business cases and have calculated
attributable fuel savings. Others have included the number of lost productive
days based on injuries brought about by lugging around such heavy tomes
of manuals in their business cases, and still others have included the cost of
mitigating against industrial action by the unions for the alternative of retaining
paper manuals for the foreseeable future. It will not be too far in the future that
we see more sophisticated technical publication apps which are highly contextual
providing a smart way of recognizing the aircra� being boarded and presenting
only the necessary documents for the user. �ere is a lot of scope to move
beyond a simple set of synchronized PDF !les in future.
�e acquisition of data
is perhaps the most
obvious solution that you
would wish to implement
via a tablet device in
�ight ops. We see reams
and reams of paper
forms being !lled in
during a �ight, gathered
up and sent back to
base via 19th century
technology, where it is
then manually loaded to
central systems. Wouldn’t
it be great if we could
capture that information
on a tablet device and
auto-magically transmit
the data back to base
once we re-establish
communications on the
ground? Having a full
suite of apps that hook
into an existing central
system is the holy grail
of tablet ROI, but it is
AUTUMN 2011 | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | WHITE PAPER: CONDUCE CONSULTING | 15
less than straight forward to realize. As I mentioned
before, most so�ware vendors of existing aviation
business systems simply aren’t geared up to provide
such apps, and, worse still, their so�ware does not
possess the requisite infrastructure to make third
party application development a straightforward
or inexpensive proposition. Secondly, most
enterprise level business applications require a
bi-directional �ow of data to operate normally. As
well as acquiring data from the user, we normally
need to interrogate or validate against data held
and maintained in the central repository. In these
times, prior to ubiquitous and inexpensive in�ight
Wi-Fi, it is a much simpler proposition to plan for
asynchronous data acquisition. Rather than looking
to provide wall to wall o+ine capability of existing
systems, I would encourage so�ware vendors and
airlines to start small and provide apps with limited
features for use in cases where validation or cross
checking of latest data sets is relatively immaterial.
Consider an aircra� maintenance repair system
where we are recording vast amounts
of data relating to aircra� maintenance,
journey logs, defects, maintenance
forecasts and so on. None of this data is
relevant to a pilot who simply wants to
raise a single defect.
He has little interest in previous
defects or maintenance history, he
simply wants to record a fault and have
it recti!ed at the earliest opportunity.
�e same would apply to cabin defects,
crew fatigue reports, cabin safety
reports and other safety occurrences.
‘Always connected’ applications are a
long way o$, so airlines should think
about starting small with one eye on
the future.
Charts and navigation apps have come a long
way in just a few months. �e Jeppesen and Lido
charting apps which were essentially glori!ed proof
of concepts for the iPad at the beginning of 2011 are
now almost fully featured with enough functional
and content coverage to meet the needs of the
majority of mainstream airlines. �eir business
models for monetization make great sense, where
the app is given away on iTunes, acting as a shop
window of capability, whilst content is distributed
through subscription services. �is is a business
model being copied by similar so�ware subscription
services. It is unlikely that we will see iPad apps
acting as primary navigational devices instead of on-
board systems, but it is widely believed that tertiary
navigation and weather charting apps might be on
their way.
We should expect to see a whole host of niche
utility and productivity apps springing up with
OEMs, MROs and aviation service providers
actively evaluating how they can extend their
service capability through technology. Performance
optimization and diagnostic apps, which currently
need a PC on which to operate, have the potential
to be tweaked to run on tablets. �e promise of
tablet devices running Windows 8 that are just as
good as the current forerunning tablets cannot come
soon enough for some so�ware vendors.
�e consumer IT industry has been
characteristically swi� to seize upon the technology
trend of tablet devices. Unsurprisingly Apple’s iPad
is at the forefront of a revolution that is leading to
the consumerisation of business so�ware. Airlines
around the world have recognized that iPads and
other tablets are here for the long haul and have
made sensible baby steps towards adopting such
technology. In spite of the current limitations that
I have mentioned, many airlines have already
e$ectively and creatively constructed business plans
for the acquisition of iPads or other tablets, whilst
keeping one eye on long term plans for further roll
out and utilization. User adoption of such devices
and systems is excellent. One airline that I have
worked with had no fewer than twenty volunteer
�ight crew who signed up to use their own personal
iPads in a pilot study. Would you expect to see a
similar willingness to ‘bring your own technology’
for some of the hardware and so�ware trends that
have gone before? Eighty per cent of the same
airline’s �ight crew are existing iPhone users, so the
roll out of iPads to an eager set of users is expected
to go without too many hitches and minimal
familiarization training.
Analysts predict a bright future for the �edgling
tablet market. Apple currently has a 61% market
share and has sold nearly 30 million iPads to date.
Recent Gartner studies suggest that by 2015 there
will have been approaching 300 million iPad sales
and it is hard to believe that they will have held o$
the might of Android to have such a strong market
share by that time. Even with the most conservative
market estimates, it is widely believed that tablets
will be pretty abundant. Combining this with
ubiquitous Wi-Fi, in-�ight connectivity and the next
generation of aviation and business apps on the
horizon, could we really be seeing the advent of a
technology revolution? I’m not sure about the
demise of the PC, but I do think that tablets
represent a long term technology solution rather
than a simple trend..
PAUL SAUNDERS
Paul works in the UK for
Conduce Consulting and Conduce
Software developing and
implementing aviation software.
He has spent the past 13 years
working in Aerospace IT within MROs, OEMs
and Software Companies in the UK and the
Middle East. In recent years he has been heavily
involved in developing software with a focus
on user experience and user centric design.
He regularly writes and present on trends
within aviation IT, being described by some
as ‘visionary’. Paul has recently worked on the
design and development of a number of tablet
and mobile apps for aviation and has assisted
airlines, MROs and software vendors devise and
implement mobile and tablet strategies.
ASK THE EXPERT
In addition to being available now to answer
any questions you have arising from this White
Paper, Paul Saunders and his colleagues Wayne
Enis and Rachel Andrews are available all year
round for one-to-one consultancies via the Ask
The Expert feature at www.aircraftIT.com. They
will be happy to assist you with your queries.
Co
So
im
He
working in Aeros
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CLICK HERE TO LEAVE YOUR QUESTIONAbout Conduce ConsultingConduce Consulting is the consulting arm of Conduce Group. Their focus is on the relationship
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of !elds including Enterprise Architecture, Project Management, Data Services and Business
Consultancy in the Aviation IT sector.
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