SubscribeToday, one of the fastest growing areas within the business world is the growth in " the Internet and Internet Related Industries".
Where does "Flight Information Display" technology fit into this fast growing area of information technology?
Internet Explorer is a "Web Browser" that allows for very powerful display protocols to be used in the displaying of information. This includes windowing of information, multi-font selection, multi colour display and it also includes the ability to display animation files and pictures all within the same frame.
What is WAP?
WAP is an attempt to define the standard for how content from the Internet is filtered for mobile communications. WAP was developed because content is now readily available on the Internet, and there needs to be a way of making it easily available to mobile terminals.
This now gives the business traveller the ability to connect online without the aid of a laptop or palmtop and the annoyance of finding a suitable telephone jack point.
What is GPRS?
General Packet Radio Service mobile phones are a further development of WAP technology. These mobile phones will offer greater speed of access and be able to display pictures when connected to the Internet. This technology is due for release in August of this year.
Any other Medium?
The latest digital televisions have the ability to connect to the Web and display information in the home, the office or hotel.
Potential
Therefore, you do not require 20/20 vision to see the potential of the Web Browser as a display medium for the display of flight information.
What is Available?
Airport Information Systems (AIS) saw the potential of this towards the end of the last century and developed a system that utilised the power of the Web and its browser features.
The primary objective was to design a flight display information system so that the passenger within the terminal building would see code-shared flights, multi-sector airports and multi-lingual remarks all contained on one line. The second objective using this technology was to do away with the old traditional private displays. This was accomplished by using Intranet (Internal Internet) features to display the same information as seen on the public displays on staff desktop personal computers.
Taking this technology a stage further AIS uplifted the identical information that the passenger and staff were viewing onto a Web Site. This Web Site can be from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or the airports own. The ability to uplift this information in real-time coupled with the advent of WAP technology enables people such as taxi drivers, coach drivers, remote staff working away from the terminal to keep in touch with the latest flight information for the cost of a local call.
What does the Future Hold?
Television
With the forecast demise of terrestrial television over the next few years there will be a growth in digital televisions installed which will have Internet access. There will no longer be a requirement for teletext style of information.
Personal Computers
The number of personal computers installed in the home and business is growing exponentially. The majority of these will have the ability to connect to the Internet.
Internet Services
The proposed free access or greatly reduced connection charges to the Web will mean that more and more people will use the Web as the information tool of the 21st century. People not using the Web will be the odd ones out.
The Intranet
This is the internal Internet within an organisation and any PC connected to the wide area network (WAN) or local area network (LAN) to display flight information. This flight information can be broken down by powerful user configuration routines to display flight information by flight type. For example: -
- Passenger Arrival Flights
- Passenger Departure Flights
- Freight Arrival Flights
- Freight Departure Flights
- All Flights including Training, Military and General Aviation Flights etc.
This technology does away with the old-fashioned staff displays and can be tailored by department. For example Customs may only wish to see inbound foreign flights.
Standard computer techniques such as "mouse over" can be used. In layman terms this is where the mouse cursor can be positioned over the flight number or registration field and a window opens automatically to show addition information about the flight, which had been entered by the apron, ramp or ATC staff etc.
These types of modern display system gives both management and staff the latest information on all flights and allows them to take and make decisions based on actual information which in turn does away with the internal telephone or fax to communicate updates by flight.
Typical Public Display
A typical screen can be seen below showing the type of detail the public requires on a modern flight information display system both in the terminal and from external sources.
Typical All Flights Display
No longer are PC controllers required to be installed within the monitor, which gives greater reliability and resilience.
It can also been seen that interfaces can be added to suitable Public Address systems so that when a status message is displayed the same message can be announced simultaneously. The system can handle two languages per flight and is an automatic function dependant on origin or destination airport.
Conclusion
Unless businesses, be they airports or otherwise, wake up to the potential of the Web they will be left behind in wake of the surge that will come from people wanting to access information through Web browser type technology as the primary way of information retrieval.
More and more companies will be conducting business on the Web through "eCommerce", which in turn will demand more and more, information being available through this medium.
The Internet will indeed be the "Super Highway for the Millennium".