I was trying to say that if BA ran everybodies flight procedures like Microsoft runs the computer world..........oh well, never mind.
Hi Rainboe.
Congratulations on managing to keep your fur on when so many others are losing theirs.
As a long time user at very close quarters of Microsoft products, and a more than occasional observer and experimenter on flight decks, all I shall say at the moment is that the day I see the Microsoft logo appearing on anything on an aircraft other than the In flight entertainment system will be the day I start to think very carefully about if I want to fly any more.
Given Microsoft's ability to produce code down to a price, that has to be released on a date regardless of the problems that users have reported during pre release testing, and that has to be patched and updated to the level that we see on an almost daily basis, there is no way that Microsoft products could ever be certified for mission critical applications such as aircraft flight deck applications.
[thread drift]Even simulators have their moments, a while back, when we were researching handling characteristics of one of the bus family, we rented a sim here in Europe to try and get some parameters for the project we were working on. No names, no secrets, let's just say that it became very clear after about 10 minutes of edge of the envelope handling that the simulation just did not represent the handling of the real thing, or if it did, then the real thing would not have been certified. We went to another manufacturers sim in the USA, ( Yeah, we had to go that far), and tried the same tests, and got results that were more meaningful, to the extent that it was possible to fly manual reversion ( sort of like Sioux city) on that simulator. On the European one, no way, it was so unstable. That was specialised software, custom written for the job, but it was wrong. OK, the airline in question didn't train to the level of needing that accuracy, that's a subject for another discussion on another day. Suffice to say that I for one would never be happy to trust Microsoft on the flight deck.[/thread drift]