“Microsoft’s marketing coup in selling Delta Airlines its Surface 2 tablet for use as an Electronic Flight Bag in place of Apple’s iPad created friction with the company’s pilots, who ‘fought hard’ against the deal,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.
“‘We fought hard for iPad’ a pilot working for the airline told AppleInsider. He described the Delta deal as being about money, travel contracts, and Delta’s Information Technology staff historically being ‘in bed’ with Microsoft,” Dilger reports. “Delta began trials with Apple’s iPad as an EFB in late 2011, shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration approved Apple’s tablet for cockpit use. It further began purchasing thousands of iPads for use in its airport restaurants last year. This makes it surprising that the company just announced plans to use the “Surface 2″ devices Microsoft just unveiled, particularly because the company says it only plans to be ‘fully operational within two years.'”
Dilger reports, “Delta’s conservative rollout plans may be related to the fact that the Surface 2 apparently hasn’t yet been studied for use as a EFB.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff A.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: If Delta is willing to go cheap on tablets for their flight crews, where else are they willing to go cheap?
If desperate Microsoft didn’t simply dump their flop into Delta cockpits for free, they probably paid Delta to take them. There is simply no other reason for Delta to consign their flight crews to years of having to try to use a failed product, a flop of epic proportions. All other competent airlines already use iPads for their EFBs. Even Delta did before this stupid, shortsighted about-face.
Delta management screwed the pooch with aplomb. Talk about a crash and burn! The idiot at Delta who signed off on this deal should be fired. Delta Airlines now just looks cheap and stupid.
Buh-bye, Delta. Unless you wise up, we will never, ever fly your crap outfit again. Hope your sellout was worth it.
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