Pilots may have started to use the iPad for flight manuals, but the rest of us will be using Android. Mark Larson, the technical manager at Boeing’s Dreamliner Gallery has told Australian Business Traveller that all of the 787 Dreamliners now in production will have the option of being equipped with Android.  Unlike other offerings by Boeing, in order to streamline and reduce cost, Airlines are limited to a list of pre-approved suppliers for entertainment system customization options; in this case the only approved suppliers are Panasonic and Thales, both of which will produce 787 specific servers and touchscreens running Android.   For those in business and first class, there will be larger Android screens of up to 17 inches, with gesture based controls, as they will be too far away to operate by touch. (It must be nice to have a problem of too much space on an airplane.) For the rest of us stuck in coach, fear not, for the new screens we will be seeing are a minimum of 7 inches wide, have a wider viewing angle than today’s screens, and are less reflective of ambient light.  I would assume the interfaces and app choices will be extremely limited to those chosen by the airline, but even these will be much richer than the current offerings, which if one is lucky, consist of DirecTV and SiriusXM radio. With Boeing’s dominance in the new and refurbished airliner industry, and the cost-necessity of limiting the number of different entertainment systems each airline offers, it would only make sense for airlines to follow Boeing’s lead and transition to all Android based entertainment systems. Android Continues to Soar.

Source: Australian Business Traveller

Popularity: 1% [?]