Embodiments of the present invention provide improved systems and methods for a programmable portable electronic device for airborne operational communications. In one embodiment, a method comprises loading application configuration information onto a storage medium on the portable electronic device from an external storage medium, the application configuration information defining an application configuration for the avionic operational data communications application and configuring an avionic operational data communications application stored in the storage medium on the portable electronic device according to the application configuration information stored in the storage medium. Further, the method includes receiving avionic operational data from an airborne server; executing the avionic operational data communications application to process the avionic operational data, wherein the execution of the avionic operational data communications application produces operational communications according to the application configuration information stored in the storage medium; and communicating the operational communications with a ground peer.