Tablets in Flight Operations

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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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


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

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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


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

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He

working in Aeros

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