Hello Everyone, This is after a very very long time I am writing a new blog post with kind of a new energy and rhythm.
So, Airlines + Tech - This topic has been there in my mind from quiet sometime now. Had got an opportunity to work with a US based major airline company where I got a chance to have a closer look into the airline industry. Learned many new things and was overexcited to know more, this industry is super exciting.
Ok so, lets first talk about few basics aviation standard concepts -
1. There are two major player in commercial aircraft industry - Airbus and Boeing. Airlines around the globe puts order to these two giants and demand and supply in this industry is very odd. say, if an airline put order in 2023 for Airbus 320 probably the chances are they will get it delivered by 2025-26.
2. The biggest cost to an airline company is the fuel cost and the second biggest cost is the salary of their employees.
3. Airline company tries really hard to save the fuel cost. As its directly proportional to the weight you are flying and the turbulence faced in air. Obviously, Airlines cannot ask there customers to reduce there weight so, they have a restriction on the weight of the baggage. If you need to carry more you need to pay more is the logic here.
The other factor involving is the turbulence, If the plane go through more turbulence they will burn more fuel. So, All the airline industry have a team to monitor the weather and route maps.
Standard operational process says that the pilots will be in cockpit two hours before the flight time and this team does the briefing of the route to the pilots. You might have seen pilot and co-pilot carrying two black stroller bags which are basically the flights manuals which are printed and provided to pilots before any flight. Approximately 13.5 kg is the weight of each bags which is 27 kgs for both pilot and copilot.
Tech has also started playing major role in replacing these manuals with its electronic form and also helping airlines in weather monitoring. I will discuss it later in this article.
4. There is an old system developed back in 1978 called ACARS i.e. Aircraft communication addressing and reporting system. This system helps the aircraft to communication and transfer signals to the ground stations. You will be surprised to know same system is still used in aircrafts till date. This is the communication medium when the aircrafts are flying over ground, when they are flying over see they connect to the ground station using the satellite communication (satcom). AID is a device which is placed in cockpit for such communication.
5. Lots of US based airlines have started rolling out Electronic flight bags (EFB) to there Aircrafts and pilots. EFB's in aircraft are called as Cockpit issued device (CID) and EFB's issued to pilots are called as Pilot issued device (PID). EFB's are revolutionising this industry by bringing them information in electronic form which is more efficient and current. These EFB's can be an iPad or a Windows touchscreen tablet. These devices are connected to Tim using a USB cable and the Tim is connected to AID which is internally connected to satcom which helps to get the internet to the EFB's. The satcom device also has a SIM card which helps it to get the internet when the plane is on ground. Application which supports the operation of the flight where installed on the EFB's which the pilot's can use in there daily workflow. These applications where mainly for wether reporting, Airports maps, Charts and manuals and communication apps.
Lets discuss more about the EFB's,
The project I got an opportunity to work on was for imaging of these EFB device with a Windows built. We were playing the role of system integrators where our job was to build the image and the apps and make sure that it functions properly on the EFB's. We started with Windows 8 and then gradually moved to Windows 10 before deploying it to production in 2020.
In the upcoming articles I will explain the architecture of EFB's and there management solution.
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