XML and the Airlines
April 27, 2004
I have a new article in Transform magazine about how Contintal Airlines has used XML and Web Services to automate some routine publishing and document review tasks. To quote briefly from the introduction:
Aircraft maintenance is an especially content-centric process. The typical aircraft comprises thousands of systems, subsystems and parts, each with its own documentation. Moreover, these parts are often changed over time; an engineering change or new safety requirement may modify the part, necessitating a change in the related documentation.
Safety is paramount in commercial aviation, so federal regulations require that the documentation be comprehensive and up to date. Like other airlines, Houston-based Continental Airlines faced the problem of ensuring that its 4,000 maintenance personnel, spread over four hubs and 23 other maintenance facilities, receive and read critical updates to maintenance documents. In the past, circulating such changes to documentation was a largely manual, and thus time-consuming and costly, process.
Posted by Bill Trippe at April 27, 2004 10:04 PM
