Patent ID: 8509963

Claim:
A method of managing information systems on an aircraft, comprising: monitoring, at a remote management center, status information from a plurality of aircraft computer systems for a plurality of fault conditions; while inflight, performing maintenance on the aircraft computer system having a fault condition to return the aircraft computer system to a normal condition; wherein the monitoring step comprises: receiving the status information from a plurality of aircraft computer systems; analyzing the received status information to determine whether a normal or fault condition exists for each aircraft computer system; and updating a maintenance database with information indicating the condition of each of the aircraft computer systems; wherein the analyzing step comprises: comparing the received status information to information stored in the maintenance database; generating a fault condition if the received status information does not match the database information or generating a normal condition if the received status information does match the database information; and assigning for each fault condition a priority status which indicates what the fault condition is and when in must be corrected; wherein the performing maintenance step comprises correcting previously identified fault conditions in an order dependent upon said priority status; wherein the correcting step comprises one of installing, configuring, repairing, removing, replacing, upgrading, otherwise changing software while said aircraft is inflight and where said correcting step is responsive to a highest priority status; and wherein the aircraft is a manned aircraft and wherein each fault condition generates a lockout status for all correcting steps which have a lower priority status.