FAA Permits American Airlines To Use iPads In Cockpit "In All Phases of Flight" 372
hypnosec writes "American Airlines has announced that it has received permission from FAA to allow its pilots to use iPads in the cockpit during 'all phases of flight.' According to the airlines, the tablet will enable pilots to store documentation in electronic form on the iPad which otherwise weighs 15.876 kg (35 pounds) when in printed form. Use of the digital documentation will enable the airlines to save as much as U.S. $1.2 million of fuel each year." That number sounds both awfully low and awfully specific.
Hope it's not IMPORTANT documentation (Score:3, Insightful)
According to the airlines, the tablet will enable pilots to store documentation in electronic form on the iPad which otherwise weighs 15.875 kg (35 pounds) when in printed form.
That's great, as long as the documentation in question isn't actually vital or particularly important. I'd hate to think of a pilot realizing his iPad is running low on power just when he needs critical info...or realizing that some things are still a lot better on a printed page (like a big fold-out schematic). "Mayday...I'm going down because the airline decided to save a buck by converting our fuel system diagram to a fucking app!...over."
Electronics (Score:5, Insightful)
See? I knew it was okay to use electronics during takeoff and landing! The pilots are using them!!! SEE??!?!!
Re:How about just an iPhone and save even more? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the iPad is not charged then obviously they... plug it into the outlet i the cockpit and charge it. And how exactly is their offline documentation going to get 'hacked'? And how would it be any more of a problem then someone maliciousy changing their printed documents?
Re:So safety is no longer a factor (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hope it's not IMPORTANT documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hate to think of a pilot realizing his fuel tank is running low on fuel just when he needs to perform a critical maneuver (like not crash).
I wonder how the heck they solved that problem?!?!?!
Re:Specific? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I wanna know is: If saving a few pounds adds up to so much fuel then why aren't they weighing passengers and charging them accordingly? How come an extra bag costs me $50 but the 350lb guy pays the same fare as a 120lb guy?
Re:Hope it's not IMPORTANT documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
What documents could they even be carrying that are considered critical/vital for a safe landing?
The ipad breaks. ... low and slow and you can use cell phones on a plane just fine... Cell network can't tell difference between my Cessna 172 at 1000 feet and 60 knots from my car on the side of a 1000 foot hill at 60 MPH... Yes, I know, its not gonna work well at 35000 feet and 500 MPH, but then again you don't have much to worry about up there.
The paper printouts of both the pilot and copilot get coffee dumped on them (at least some pilots I know like to plan flights on their desktop PC and then print out neatly annotated paperwork specifically for their flight.... the charts for some airport 100 miles away are for emergency diversion use not daily flying)
Then the pilot's phone breaks (lots of pilots have a charts app on their phone)
Then the copilots phone breaks.
Then both redundant comm radios break so they can't ask ATC for help (This doesn't scale if no one ever carries plates and everyone pesters ATC for every little detail every time, but a 1 in a billion accident in a crazy scenario is perfectly scalable...)
Then they're too low on fuel to fly that triangle pattern (I forget the exact shape but its the pattern that means holy shit I'm lost please send me an escort)
Then the mode C transponder fails so they can't change the code to emergency thus getting themselves an "escort", but the mode C failure isn't noticed by ATC who naturally think the plane just crashed so they scramble everyone over to look at you. So this is a weird situation... maybe if the transponder and its circuit breaker had superglue sprayed all over it?
Then the "sat phone" system fails so they can't call the tower phone or any other person in the entire world who has charts
Then every single cell phone on the plane fails
Then the landing lights have to fail so you can't communicate with a tower via morse light flashing. SOS landing lights will get them all wound up..
Then the built in GPS which also usually has charts and data has to fail (admittedly, usually no NOTAMs...)
Also the pilots hand held GPS has to fail (lots of pilots have a GPS stuffed in their flight bag, right next to the flashlight) and the copilots.
Then bad weather over a large area has to roll in so they can't simply go VFR approach and just eyeball it (gonna be a rough, but probably safe, landing)
There have to be no other planes in the air to follow or get attention of..
The compass and a couple primary flight instruments and the clock all have to fail so they can't dead reckon their position (like over the ocean or something)
Well, lets say both pilots are new to the area so they can't rely on memory.
There's probably a few other things that have to break that I haven't thought of before a ipad failure will take out a plane. Then again if more than a dozen other things listed above all also have to break simultaneously its hard to give JUST the ipad all the credit for crashing the plane.
Re:So safety is no longer a factor (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell ya what. Here's a thirty-five pound case filled with binders, all stuffed with papers. Why don't you check each page to guarantee that every single one is in place, up-to-date and undamaged, while I ensure that between these two electronic tablets that the pilot and co-pilot are carrying, at least one of them will power up and run the appropriate reader app.
Go ahead. I'll wait for you. Take all the time you need.
Then, make sure that you repeat that check before every single flight. THEN you can go on about how bug-free your big bag of charts and checklists is.
Re:Specific? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I wanna know is: If saving a few pounds adds up to so much fuel then why aren't they weighing passengers and charging them accordingly? How come an extra bag costs me $50 but the 350lb guy pays the same fare as a 120lb guy?
The paper manuals are not likely to complain, boycott or sue for discrimination. That's why.
Re:How about just an iPhone and save even more? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for plane docs, it doesn't really matter as long as the ipad is highly reliable.
I don't think any Avionics expert would call the iPad "highly reliable".
You use the same checklist over and over to make sure you don't forget anything... its 99.999% good without a checklist (literally) so once or twice is no big deal.
I've never heard that the iPad gives 5 9's of reliability.
But assuming that it is, it's that .0001% of the time when the iPad is not available that is the problem. The pilot goes through the identical checklist on every single flight, then that one time the iPad won't boot, he has to play it by ear, change his routine, and hope that he didn't miss anything. That's what causes accidents and is why there is a checklist in the first place. Just telling the pilot that he has to pay more attention this time because he can't run through the checklist goes against human nature since it means that he'll be so focused on the flaps that he'll forget to adjust the rudder trim (or whatever it is that airline pilots do in their checklists)
There is some truth that the ipad will probably be more up to date and less likely to have a page torn out or coffee dumped on it than paper. It'll likely be more reliable as a system, even if it doesn't degrade smoothly.
I'd rather have my pilot try to decipher an emergency checklist on a torn up page than stare at his reflection in a blank iPad screen.
I still have paper documentation in my datacenter that tells me how to recover key servers because I know that technology sometimes fails, despite redundant safeguards.
Re:Not too suprising (Score:4, Insightful)
No reason this should be restricted to apple products as an android tablet would work just as well to view pdf files, but still, very reasonable savings estimate.
You dont know the FAA then. I have two headsets, a Bose X and a Lightspeed Zulu. Both have the same 1/4" plugs and the slightly smaller one for the mic, both transmit the audio to the headset, both have (various degrees of) noisecancelling microphones, both use active noise cancellation.
But.... one has been shown to conform to a technical standards order (TSO) and one has not. So I can wear one of them at work, and one of them I cannot. All the TSO is btw is some standards on how the headset performs in certain situations, but the mfgr has to pay for the testing and certification. Both headsets work great, in fact the non-TSO one works better, but since word came down that we were not authorized to use non-TSO equipment, I cant wear it.
Its entirely plausible that apple has gone through a special certification process, and others have not. Typical of the FAA the certification is restricted to specific models, so you couldnt do something like certify "android", you would have to certify a specific hardware model with a specific version of the android OS.
Re:How about just an iPhone and save even more? (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine these would be "controlled" iPads, updated by the flight management staff of the airline. They are running a specialised app from Jeppesen, who have benn producing flight charts for ever, so I should imagine it probably has a custom and controlled update system.
Just because they use consumer equipment, they don't have to use it in the consumer manner.
Re:So safety is no longer a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the main reason for the whole "seat backs up, tray tables closed, put away your portable electronics" rule is that the takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight, and if something goes wrong, people need to be able to respond, need to not be distracted, and need to not have extra impediments to moving within the cabin.
So why it it ok to read a bulky 30 ounce, $30 hardback book during takeoff/landing, but a 6 ounce $60 Kindle has to be put away?
Re:So safety is no longer a factor (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet they have no rules against a person sleeping during these times, or talking to the person beside them. They also do not try to stop people from reading non-electronic material.
The "distraction" excuse is a bunch of B.S. It's paranoia based on concepts that have been obsolete for at least 2 decades.