Say you're sitting on an American Airlines jet that's stuck at the gate because of a mechanical problem. You can get some work done on your laptop while you wait. At the same time, underneath the airplane, laptops are also helping your plane get fixed more quickly.
American Airlines Inc. maintenance supervisors Gene Blasavage and Gary Carlson can't tell you how much their new computer system has increased productivity. But they can tell you how much faster American's mechanics can put broken airplanes back in the air. And that's the bottom line for them.
"Planes are waiting at the gate, people are on it, and you've got to do stuff," Mr. Carlson said. "We can turn a 45-minute wait into 10 or 15 minutes." They're doing it with laptops and a wireless network that can call up repair manuals, parts lists, airplane records and other information instantly.
Such a system was only a dream 10 years ago, but now it's part of the daily routine for the line mechanics who hustle to keep American's planes flying.
From the time it created the Sabre reservation system in the 1970s, American had developed a reputation for technological superiority in how airlines operate. And it went far beyond just a computer system to help it and travel agents book travelers. It was a leader in revenue management, or pricing tickets to get the most money out of each seat. Its programmers developed software to better schedule airplane crews, ground employees and aircraft for maximum productivity. It produced call center software and hardware to better handle reservations calls; tools to manage AMR's finances, including for its investment subsidiary; and other technologies to help the airline run better.
Nowhere is American's technological innovations more apparent than in its maintenance offices at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where mechanics use 28 Panasonic Toughbook laptops to provide them almost all the information they need to keep American's 500-plus departures from the airport each day as on time as possible. The system, called Quantum, links the computers wirelessly through the Sprint cellular network with American's mainframe computers, on American's internal Vianet network.
The result is that mechanics can pull up all the information they need to work on airplanes without having to run back to the office to look up information on microfilm, bound volumes or desktop computers. "Before, they might make three or four trips into the office to get on the mainframe," said Mr. Carlson, production manager in maintenance and engineering at D/FW for American.
The line mechanics at the airports are the first-aid workers for broken airplanes, as opposed to the mechanics who do the heavy maintenance and repairs on the west side of D/FW and at Tulsa, Kansas City and Alliance Airport in Fort Worth. A similar technological revolution is going at those bases as American and its Transport Workers Union members compete for heavy maintenance work from other airlines as well as doing American's in-house work faster and cheaper. Mr. Blasavage, a tech crew chief, said the amount of information now available to his mechanics is much greater than just a year ago, when Quantum was launched. And the wireless laptops have untethered the mechanics. "Anything you do on a desktop, you can do through here," he said, tapping his laptop. "The nice thing about it is you can be anywhere in the world and if you have a Sprint connection, you can pull up everything. If you go to another station where they don't have maintenance, you can take this with you and access all the information."
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American Airlines Inc. maintenance supervisors Gene Blasavage and Gary Carlson can't tell you how much their new computer system has increased productivity. But they can tell you how much faster American's mechanics can put broken airplanes back in the air. And that's the bottom line for them.
"Planes are waiting at the gate, people are on it, and you've got to do stuff," Mr. Carlson said. "We can turn a 45-minute wait into 10 or 15 minutes." They're doing it with laptops and a wireless network that can call up repair manuals, parts lists, airplane records and other information instantly.
Such a system was only a dream 10 years ago, but now it's part of the daily routine for the line mechanics who hustle to keep American's planes flying.
From the time it created the Sabre reservation system in the 1970s, American had developed a reputation for technological superiority in how airlines operate. And it went far beyond just a computer system to help it and travel agents book travelers. It was a leader in revenue management, or pricing tickets to get the most money out of each seat. Its programmers developed software to better schedule airplane crews, ground employees and aircraft for maximum productivity. It produced call center software and hardware to better handle reservations calls; tools to manage AMR's finances, including for its investment subsidiary; and other technologies to help the airline run better.
Nowhere is American's technological innovations more apparent than in its maintenance offices at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where mechanics use 28 Panasonic Toughbook laptops to provide them almost all the information they need to keep American's 500-plus departures from the airport each day as on time as possible. The system, called Quantum, links the computers wirelessly through the Sprint cellular network with American's mainframe computers, on American's internal Vianet network.
The result is that mechanics can pull up all the information they need to work on airplanes without having to run back to the office to look up information on microfilm, bound volumes or desktop computers. "Before, they might make three or four trips into the office to get on the mainframe," said Mr. Carlson, production manager in maintenance and engineering at D/FW for American.
The line mechanics at the airports are the first-aid workers for broken airplanes, as opposed to the mechanics who do the heavy maintenance and repairs on the west side of D/FW and at Tulsa, Kansas City and Alliance Airport in Fort Worth. A similar technological revolution is going at those bases as American and its Transport Workers Union members compete for heavy maintenance work from other airlines as well as doing American's in-house work faster and cheaper. Mr. Blasavage, a tech crew chief, said the amount of information now available to his mechanics is much greater than just a year ago, when Quantum was launched. And the wireless laptops have untethered the mechanics. "Anything you do on a desktop, you can do through here," he said, tapping his laptop. "The nice thing about it is you can be anywhere in the world and if you have a Sprint connection, you can pull up everything. If you go to another station where they don't have maintenance, you can take this with you and access all the information."
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