The Challenge
Image by Mark Smith
TEQneers was approached by a Top Five Airline in order to support them with a challenge they were unable to tackle on their own. In accordance with aviation regulations, pilots are required to be in possession of up-to-date maps on a weekly basis. To date, the Airline was providing the pilots with printed maps, not only was this unsustainable, the manual intervention required was excessive.
The Idea
The traditional print maps would be replaced with a solution utilising a digital tablet (iPad). In order to achieve this, a worldwide distribution with a web server and services to download were required. The most important aspect was to ensure that all pilots were constantly updated with the latest maps.
The Solution
TEQneers developed an app for the iPad client in Objective-C for both pilots and flight crew. Many additional features were added including zooming, rotation, marks, comments and less mass to carry, it provided pilots with the regulation-required maps as well as an app for any additional airline documents. Some of the technical details of the solution include:
- a failsafe architecture based on a master-slave-mechanism for all backend systems
- a secure PHP backend web platform for customer and airlines
- backend system also has reporting, monitoring and warning capabilities to help and inform airlines
- a document distribution systems being failsafe and highly scalable for tens of thousands of pilots
- servers and hosting services for this solution
The Outcome
The new technology has been successfully integrated across many airlines and to over 10,000 pilots worldwide within the last 10 years.