Thanks for sharing! I would have always assumed that there was an air gap between the consumer focused IFE networking gear and the flight systems.
I mostly worked on the Electronic Flight Bag, which is a hilarious case of Boeing realizing that paper flight bags were asinine, and then coming up with an industrial strength solution to the problem of carrying what amounted to a few PDFs on board an airplane.
Last time I checked (years ago) airlines were just moving to iPads whenever possible.
(A flight bag has hundreds upon hundreds of pages of paper that are required by law to be on board an airplane with the pilot, everything from safety literature to information on the current flight, it is a huge hassle)
Again the problem here is, if Boeing ships something stock, the FAA equivalent in every market a plane will be sold into has to agree to every decision made. If a single regulatory body anywhere declares that iPads are not safe for use onboard an airplane, well, the entire idea gets scrapped. This happens to a lot of good ideas.
If Boeing had its way, we'd all have in flight cellular, Wi-Fi, and more, as options on every plane trip we took. Boeing spends a lot of time and a lot of effort on what they know will likely be futile efforts to improve the passengers' experience. But they try anyway. Everyone I met working there flat out loved airplanes with the same zest and zeal we all here share about technology.
Here's a glimpse of the flightbag that Lufthansa is using on the B747. It actively maps plane position in the terminal among other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhXXjNybx6A&t=2m4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhXXjNybx6A&t=13m43s
(FYI, PilotsEye.TV on YouTube is incredible if you enjoy geeking out on airplane stuff. They somehow convinced a few European carriers to mount cameras all over the cockpits and talk to the pilots in-flight. There are DVDs as well but I think they're all in German. Check out the A340 that loses an engine in the air. I don't think that's ever been publicly filmed before).
I assume this data comes somewhere from the flight computers.
Try attaching your cell phone to a rocket travelling over 1200 mph or above 60,000 feet, you'll find that your GPS unit basically shuts down. That's not to say that your GPS hardware is incapable of operating under those parameters, it's just designed to shut down so it can't be used to guide ICBMs. Commercial airplanes typically operate at half the altitude and speed which would trigger the condition.
The limits are 1,200 mph speed and 18,000 m altitude. Google tells me a 747's limits are around 615 mph and 14,000 m; Concorde's limits were closer to 1,350 mph and 18,300 m. Still, I'm sure if you're making an airliner you can get access to GPS receivers that will work even at maximum speed and altitude!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CoCom&oldid=608893...
It would also seem sensible that any interaction the pilots might want to perform on the cabin computer systems could be done by giving them a terminal on that network.
The level of scrutiny that IPC (inter-processor communication) channel got was insane. It is probably one of the safest IPC channels in existence!
Unfortunately I didn't fully grasp what systems it was connecting, aviation is full of its own parallel set of jagon that I didn't fully learn in my short time at Boeing!
Doesn't sound at all odd -- quite sensible actually. Though I would probably have suggested a pairing more along the lines of OpenBSD/x64 and Linux/ARM or some-such. It depends on what the remainder of the systems is using. This is a perfect example of where ecosystem diversity is a Good Thing.