Delta Air Lines, for one, expects to increase MRO IT spending by "double digit percentages" in 2005, according to Udo Rieder, vice president, engineering and planning, technical operations. "The airline is trying to become more efficient, year to year, in order to reduce costs," he said. "One way of doing this is to apply new technologies that will eliminate legacy systems, where possible, and reduce IT system complexity."

Eliminating legacy systems should help the company's maintenance operations move toward greater use of enterprise applications -- being able to move information across the entire business spectrum -- and away from the more localized, departmental systems, said Mike Lane, Delta's technical operations general manager, process and technology engineering.

Between April 2003 and June of this year, Delta made a major investment in web-based delivery of technical manuals via the company's intranet site. The new system, known as Flightline, supplied by InfoTrust of Lafayette, Colo., hosts 70 maintenance manuals and illustrated parts catalogs covering all aircraft and engines in Delta's fleet. Preliminary planning to make the manuals available on hand-held devices via wireless transmission now is going forward, and will be presented to Delta's management in 2005 for approval.

As Lane said, hand-held devices will allow the technicians to access manuals at their work sites, including base facilities, back shops or on the line. "A (line service) technician may have to leave the airplane and walk three to four gates away to access the maintenance data," he said. "Using a hand-held device, he won't have to leave the side of the airplane."

If the project is approved, it initially will be applied to base maintenance and line service. Expansion to back shops, such as those used for engine and component repair, would come later.

SkyWest also is opting for a wireless information distribution system. Bill Clark, the St. George, Utah-based regional airline's manager of maintenance data systems, said that plans are to have this in place during 2005. SkyWest, which developed its own IT system in-house five years ago,is selecting outside vendors to supply three modules as a part of the wireless distribution project, specifically for document distribution, formatting and management, and authoring.

"This will be particularly beneficial for line maintenance at the hangar and at airports where the mechanics mostly work out on the ramp and gate areas," said Clark. "The technology we buy for this will then interface with our existing data system.

Although Clark could not supply numbers, he said that the project will represent an increase in out-of-pocket spending for IT-related hardware and software compared with the last few years, but that it will be justified by productivity gains.

In January, American Airlines, began implementing a wireless system using ruggedized laptop computers at Miami, and it expects to extend it to all of its Class I, and some Class II, stations by the second quarter of 2005. In addition to Miami, the Class I stations are Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago O'Hare, and New York John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. The carrier plans to distribute a total of 275 laptops to technicians for line maintenance and overnight checks.