SEATTLE, Feb. 16, 1999 -- Airline demand for The Boeing Company's advanced digital troubleshooting aid for airplane mechanics shot up 100 percent in 1998, Boeing said today. In 1998, the number of airlines either using the Portable Maintenance Aid, or signing letters of intent to do so, jumped from 47 at the beginning of the year to 95 by year's end.
The Portable Maintenance Aid (PMA) puts an entire technical library of key maintenance information in a laptop computer that a mechanic can carry directly to the airplane. All the information needed to perform maintenance and return an airplane to service in the minimum time is at the mechanic's fingertips.
This digital tool streamlines the troubleshooting process by eliminating time-consuming and repeated trips to the crew room or airline reference library to look up maintenance data in paper manuals or on microfilm readers.
Boeing also announced today that the Portable Maintenance Aid will soon become an even more powerful and indispensable tool. The PMA version 3.0 -- scheduled for release in mid-1999 -- will include the company's leading-edge, intelligent graphics technology to enhance user navigation, as well as a browser-based interface.
Other features in version 3.0 include more extensive hyperlinking, greater flexibility in how information is distributed and presented, and a more robust architecture that will accommodate a suite of future Boeing digital products.
Though originally designed as a line mechanic's diagnostic tool when it was first introduced three years ago, the Portable Maintenance Aid is also very useful to airline engineers, who rely on its full electronic cross-referencing and powerful search capability to help them complete numerous engineering tasks. PMA provides mechanics and engineers with quick, easy access to the contents of the Aircraft Maintenance Manual, Fault Isolation Manual, Illustrated Parts Catalog, and other critical information.
"The Portable Maintenance Aid has proven itself with Canadian Airlines," said Ken Goosen, vice president of Engineering and Maintenance at Canadian Airlines. "We are using PMA in our maintenance operations in Vancouver and Toronto. We recently added Bangkok and Hong Kong as PMA stations, and with the ongoing improvements to PMA, we plan to use it system-wide in the future."
Canadian Airlines was one of the airlines that led the operational, test and evaluation trials of the Portable Maintenance Aid.
"We're always looking for new ways to add value for our customers, and we're delighted that airlines are finding our Portable Maintenance Aid an important productivity tool in their daily operations," said Brad Cvetovich, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president - Customer Support. "We're looking forward to providing even more functionality and value in the new version we'll introduce later this year."
More information on Boeing digital data products and services for airline customers can be found at either of the following URL:
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