Boeing Expands On-Line Service For Aircraft Maintenance

SEATTLE, April 30, 1996 -- One year after introducing the industry's first on-line service providing aircraft technical drawings and parts lists, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group today announced a major expansion in digital maintenance data available over a global network.

The expanded service is called Boeing On-Line Data (BOLD). It provides not only drawings and parts lists, but such essential data as recent Service Bulletins, the complete Service Bulletin Index, specifications and processes for parts and materials, and the Boeing Component Maintenance Manuals.

By digitizing this information and putting it online, complete with retrieval and viewing software, Boeing moves closer to a one-stop-shopping concept for aircraft maintenance data. "In the future, our customers will get all the data required to operate their Boeing aircraft through a single network connection," said Craig Savio, director of technical data processes.

"This will be much more efficient and accurate than searching through thousands of pages of manuals, or hundreds of thousands of aperture cards."

The cards, containing microfilm viewed through an enlarger, have been the conventional means of storing aircraft drawings and parts lists for decades. A set of cards for a single aircraft type can number well over 100,000, and these can easily be misfiled or damaged.

Last year when Boeing offered the first on-line replacement for aperture cards through a system known as REDARS, airlines were freed from managing this information by having direct access to a Boeing database. With the advent of BOLD, much more information is available online, and all of it is updated daily.

"On-line access is a true 'pull system' that lets our customers get the latest technical data when and where they need it, right at their own computer workstations," said Savio. "They won't need to go to a technical library or wait for us to send them data in a physical form -- microfilm, paper, tape or diskettes."

Information in the BOLD databases is delivered according to standards developed by the Air Transport Association. This helps users quickly search and retrieve the precise data needed for specific maintenance tasks.

BOLD subscribers may choose any of several high-speed, wide-area-network providers. One of those is SITA, which serves the aerospace industry and has developed its global AeroNet service for this type of application.