German carrier Lufthansa became the latest airline to offer iPads to its cabin crew. The airline is terming this as a year of digitization and has issued 20,000 cabin mobile devices as part of this campaign.
“Lufthansa crewFlight” – the application custom developed will show the seating plan and give plenty of information on the guests for the next flight. The cabin mobile device (CMD) will be rolled out for the entire cabin crew over the next few weeks and the crew members can access all the data they need to work on board. The CMD also has service manuals and service scheduled and also highlights any changes in the plans.
The airline already has Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) in operation in the cockpit since early 2015 and is used by 4300 pilots for operations and flight planning. The cabin crew managers had also started receiving tablets since then and now it is being rolled out for the all the cabin crew.
This “paperless” working will be a major and visible step in the year of digitization for Lufthansa.
Rival European carrier KLM has been rolling out iPads for its crew since 2013 after a pilot project in 2011, the same year with British Airways did a pilot for the same concept.
These devices help send messages to engineering for an in-operable seat or updates the special meal request of a passenger who has changed seats or pops up a message to the cabin crew to serve a meal to a business class passenger who has requested a certain time for serving the meal.
Technology indeed has no limits. The best it seems is yet to come. .
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