On Monday, Delta announced its partnership with Microsoft to equip its more than 11,000 pilots with Surface 2 electronic flight bag devices operating on Windows 8.1 RT. Stored on the Surface 2 will be thousands of pages of easily accessible electronic documents, charts, navigational aids, checklists and other key reference materials previously kept in heavy bags. Once rolled out to the entire fleet, Delta will see an immediate fuel and cost savings.

Pilots will benefit from a tablet that puts at their fingertips key information about their flight right when they need it. Gone are the days of thumbing through charts and reference material in large binders; now, cockpit crews can pull up navigation information almost immediately, and zoom in on and identify safe and routes of flight while working through necessary checklists. The device?s suite of features including Live Tile software pushes and real-time updates to the pilots.

Delta has been developing and planning the rollout of a Microsoft-supported electronic flight bag for cockpit crews.

The Windows 8.1 RT operating system has commonality with Delta's existing software solutions, giving Delta ease and flexibility of implementation.