Airbus Linux 1.0

Jan 31 2005

When I flew to Boston, I was surprised NWA would be flying an Airbus instead of a Boeing. I believe it was an A330 and had a funky DVD-quality playback multimedia system “built by” Panasonic. I was wondering how they manage having cca 300 seats control movie playback (rewind and such), network games etc.

On the way back my seat revealed the magic showing the bootup process. I still wonder what kind of hardware they’re running it on.

Airbus MM System powered by Linux

Unfortunately just like on the desktop, the system needs a bit of a polish. The navigation required too many controller buttons and wasn’t very consistent. And, well, your seat probably doesn’t want to get rebooted when the captain wants to speak to you ;).