Crashing iPad App Grounds Dozens of American Airline Flights 263
infolation writes: American Airlines was forced to delay multiple flights on Tuesday night after the iPad app used by pilots crashed. Introduced in 2013, the cockpit iPads are used as an "electronic flight bag," replacing 16kg (35lb) of paper manuals which pilots are typically required to carry on flights. In some cases, the flights had to return to the gate to access Wi-Fi to fix the issue.
NB4 (Score:5, Funny)
holding the plane wrong
Shoulda run Linux (Score:4, Funny)
or at least the Android variant thereof. Fools.
New catchphase Re: Shoulda run Linux (Score:2)
"Yes, but does it fly Linux?"
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Right... because running a different operating system would have stopped a 3rd party application from crashing. >.
Re:Shoulda run Linux (Score:4, Funny)
Let the Zealots have their fun.
Lets really ignore the fundamental architecture between Android (Linux) and iOS (BSD) Are actually very close in design.
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And six engines, 4 wings and a half dozen pilots.
Belt AND suspenders!
Re:Android, iOS, and Windows Atom (Score:5, Informative)
It seems reasonable to have three tablets on the flight deck, running iOS, Android, and Windows 8 for Atom.
The app crashed, not the OS. So having multiple OSes may help in some situations, but not in this one. Some mission critical applications are implemented by two teams working independently. Since this app is basically just a PDF reader with a customized menu, that should not be difficult.
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Right... because running a different operating system would have stopped a 3rd party application from crashing. >.
Well, it's pretty likely that trying to run an iOS app under Android would result in the application not even starting....
Wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now there's a technology fail for you.
Reminds me of a US naval ship being towed to shore because Windows NT crashed.
I guess this is a problem when you have consumer technology being used in mission critical environments.
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single vendor solution, huh? really? REALLY? you flyboys thought that trusting one platform, instead of having a dual tech strategy was ENOUGH?
who the hell is designing this system? who thought that not having an alternative backup (even if just a netbook with pdfs loaded) was a good idea?
that person or group should be fired and never hired into tech again.
stupid neophyte must be running the FAA. this does NOT inspire confidence, guys!!!
shit, guys; when I do a presentation (ie, much less critical than
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Problem is the EFB always needs to be up to date and synchronized between pilot and copilot. I imagine the problem was associated with a Jeppsen update more than the ipad, but the recent wifi hack does bring that into question some...
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that's a likely cause. I doubt they're updating the app (executable) on a regular basis and pushing the update, when it's only the data that changes regularly. All it takes is one glitch in a weekly data update, and one bad [phworld.org] switch statement [calpoly.edu] to cause a program to crash.
Proper error handling is one of the most important things in keeping things running (especially in unattended systems), but one of the harder things to get right, because it's hard to test (as in QA) for every possible unexpected input. You have to get a bit paranoid with your coding, because garbage input really is out to get you.
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single vendor solution, huh? really? REALLY?
I still can't believe so many schools districts make the same mistake. It's like bending over asking to be vendor locked-in.
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I'm boggled by the fact that you flyboys brought only ONE type of tech onboard for this map stuff.
Maybe your argument is with Jeppsen. They've had a pretty big monopoly for a very long time now.
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Racist? Why? Sexist, maybe...
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Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
eFlight books were switched to to save millions of dollars in fuel costs every year. They're that heavy.
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But there are millions of flights every years. So are you saying that they saved $1 per flight? Wouldn't it make sense to keep copies of the manual around at the airport so that they could use them if necessary? It wouldn't have any fuel costs to keep them on the ground.
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And how exactly would that solve this problem? The one of not having the flight book *in the plane*?
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> And how exactly would that solve this problem? The one of not having the flight book *in the plane*?
This is a perfect example of the helpless (and rigid) mentality of the Apple user.
The solution is pretty simple really...
1) Take one of those trucks that they use to load meals and snacks and sodas and fill it with manuals.
2) Drive up to the grounded plane.
3) Open the door.
4) Shove printed manuals through the door.
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Honestly, the Apple-ness of this is completely irrelevant, and you know damned well it is.
A device, approved by the FAA for these purposes, received an update from the vendor (probably), which caused said device to crash. Since the function of that device is required by FAA regulations, you can't fly without it.
The bundle of manuals weighed around 40 pounds, and eliminating them was expected to save them millions in fuel costs.
This exact same problem could have happened on Windows or Linux.
Your bitching ab
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But there are millions of flights every years. So are you saying that they saved $1 per flight? Wouldn't it make sense to keep copies of the manual around at the airport so that they could use them if necessary? It wouldn't have any fuel costs to keep them on the ground.
Try each airline is saving millions of dollars of fuel, not the industry as a whole. And it's not just fuel, they have to worry about these things being out of date - version control is critical with this data. So they also spend money on having people verify that the pilots have the correct data that could be used for other purposes.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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But there are millions of flights every years. So are you saying that they saved $1 per flight? Wouldn't it make sense to keep copies of the manual around at the airport so that they could use them if necessary? It wouldn't have any fuel costs to keep them on the ground.
So what you mean is that pilots must read and memorize the document at the airport before they take off? Your suggested solution does not solve anything and is irrelevant. The issue is that they need the document on board, not leaving behind at the airport. The weight of document implies that there are a lot of information you have with on board (35 lbs). Saving fuel cost is what airlines try to do in order to profit more...
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those flight bags, at 35 lbs, were also very uncomfortable for the pilots to lug around. I remember how heavy a backpack full of textbooks was as a student, and wouldn't wish to repeat that experience at my age, which is still younger than many pilots. I wouldn't be surprised if the pilots were pushing for this as well.
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eFlight books were switched to to save millions of dollars in fuel costs every year. They're that heavy.
They're 16kg (35lb) (from TFS) - hardly "that heavy". One drink cart weighs more than that - empty.
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Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, since this happened to many at about the same time, I assume an update or change was to blame. Don't update these unless there is a reason. And test if you do update, or keep a non-updated backup on hand until the update is proven reliable.
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Return to gate to get on wifi to fix it vs return to gate to get backup paper documents. Either way they'd have been in the same boat.
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Redundancy doesn't need to be hardcopies. Either bring backup I-pads, or better maybe a backup windows tab so you have both diversity and redundancy. Also, since this happened to many at about the same time, I assume an update or change was to blame. Don't update these unless there is a reason. And test if you do update, or keep a non-updated backup on hand until the update is proven reliable.
The update was likely to some item of data the application uses, not the application itself. Otherwise it would have affected the entire AA fleet and not just 737's. This data is updated frequently and using old data could be dangerous to that flight and other planes in the air.
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The update was likely to some item of data the application uses, not the application itself.
I don't see how you have any information to support this assumption. I'd guess its more likely an IOS update and some resulting incompatibility. Updating the data itself is probably the least likely change to cause error. Also, that data probably doesn't change very often, so it would have been pretty obvious if that were a root cause.
The evidence to suggest that it was a data change and not an application update was that their entire fleet of 737's was down. There was no report of another airframe being affected. Also, the data does change on a regular basis. From the FAA [faa.gov]:
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Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
Because they were expecting to save millions in fuel from not schlepping them around.
So bringing the physical copy would have been almost 40 pounds of crap, which would defeat the purpose of having the iPad.
Not saying I agree with not having a backup. But I can see why airlines wanted to get rid of it.
A little known fact about aircraft manuals ... pretty much no two are identical since the production of planes changes over the years, and they all have slightly different pieces and parts. So this 737 is unlikely to be identical to that 737.
You cant' have one manual, you need one for each damned aircraft. Which is part of the appeal for having it in electronic form.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They DO have a backup...
Both pilots carry IDENTICAL I-Pads.... What amazes me is that nobody thought of the single point of failure, the application the I-Pads run.. OOPS..
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, how they failed to have two distinct sets which are never updated at the same time eludes me.
That just pretty much guaranteed it would eventually go wrong on them.
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Yea, but the problem was discovered before the aircraft left the ground so this is not a safety issue.
I'm guessing that their solution will be to put Pilots and Copilots on different update schedules and also allow for the immediate roll back of any software updates by the user. Where I don't think having one application on one OS is necessarily all that risky, what cost them in this case was the inability for the pilots to roll back to the last version that worked right after an upgrade or grab a 'backup
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They still carry a paper copy of their emergency handbook, the one with all the emergency procedures in it. The iPads failing in the air wouldn't be a safety issue so long as the radio didn't fail, since I don't think there's any information in the iPad that the controller can't talk the aircraft through.
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
The emergency handbook for the aircraft isn't the issue here, it's the maps and approach plates which are constantly changing and must be kept current. The maps are legally required to fly IFR so it's part of the checklist before you kick the tires and light the fires you make sure you have the necessary maps and approach plates for your destination and alternates.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Informative)
No can do.
The problem isn't the iPad. Or the application. It's that one particular updated doc caused a problem.
And by flight regulations, EVERYONE has to carry the latest revision of the document. And every document is on a different update schedule.
Some documents are changed only when there are updates. Other documents have fixed expiry dates and must be updated to the latest version before that.
And at all times you must have the latest available updates - sure there's maybe a week of grace when the new edition comes out before the old edition expires, but that's about it.
In the paper world, people were actually employed to go through all 35lbs of documents ensuring the latest versions of every page were present (pages are usually supplied as differences in binders, so you remove the old page and stick in the new page. Pages were versioned (typically by date) and there's often a cover sheet saying what's the latest version of each page (updated every time there's an update).
Of course, if you have hundreds of pilots each having to do this, eventually the human version of patch(1) will screw up, so you need to double check for this.
It's why EFBs have been so widely embraced - not having to have someone check 35lbs of documents practically daily, not having to have a whole infrastructure set up to distribute updates, not having to spend time updating documents, etc, it's a terrible chore.
In fact, given the number of updates and how long it's been going on, it's surprising it's only happened once that an update screws up - I'm sure in the past with paper it happened dozens or hundreds of times a day because updates happen that often, usually to different subsets of the pilots.
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Google does this for a reason with all of their updates in the Android store, and lots of major devs do it also. It's built into the deployment tool, where you can specify all at once or how to dole it out so that you see major bugs before they affect you're entire group. I can
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Emergency procedure checklists are still on hard-copy in the cockpit. Flight books (and EFBs) are for routine operations and include things like the flight path, loading and fuel, PAX & cargo manifest, approach & landing procedures for destination, alternate, and en-route airports, en-route weather forecasts, and so on.
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This is a fail because they could have continued to carry the physical copy of everything needed as a Plan B.
I did not see any information about whether or not the still carry a physical copy as a backup. If it were up to me, I would do just that. And since the physical copy is the backup, not the primary, I would not begin a flight unless I knew that both my primary (iPad) and backup (paper) were both available and working.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Informative)
The US naval ship Windows NT crash meme is somewhat of a myth - there was a testbed ship (USS Yorktown CG-48) running an experimental ship management and integration system. The crash did indeed occur, but it had nothing to do with Windows NT and everything to do with invalid data being entered into the apps management system causing all linked systems to stop working. While everyone jumps on the "Windows NT" aspect of this, it would have happened under Unix as well.
USS Yorktown crash nothing to do with Windows NT? (Score:5, Informative)
a database overfow error (resulting from a divide by zero operation) caused the ship's propulsion system to fail [cigital.com].
The Yorktown Affair [jerrypournelle.com]
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These ipads were replacements for a big bag of relatively static documentation. For that purpose, you'd think that you would freeze the iOS version for long periods of time(and have IT test the hell out of any updates), and have a similarly static app that Nobody Touches without substantial approval, with only some PDF or HTML documents specific to the fl
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These ipads were replacements for a big bag of relatively static documentation. For that purpose, you'd think that you would freeze the iOS version for long periods of time(and have IT test the hell out of any updates), and have a similarly static app that Nobody Touches without substantial approval, with only some PDF or HTML documents specific to the flight swapped out as needed.
The data is not static. And the fact that it happened only to the 737 aircraft in the fleet suggests that it had something to do with data that was specific to this aircraft and not the application or iPad OS itself.
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the time Windows NT wasn't a consumer technology, Windows NT was a serious contender in the server space, for mission critical systems. At that time Linux was still considered a Hobby OS. Other alternatives were Unix variant, but during those stages they weren't really that much better. It was just when we heard that Windows NT crashed, we all laughed at it, because of allegiance towards Linux.
However today... Consumer technology today Windows, Android, iOS. Are really based on Professional Server Grade OS Kernels. They are just running on cheaper hardware.
The issue for this isn't blaming the iPad or iOS but the maker of that App for those documents. They screwed up, This would have happened if they had a Million Dollar professional system in their hands too.
The elephant can remember... (Score:2)
Reminds me of a US naval ship being towed to shore because Windows NT crashed.
In 1997, the ship in question was a test bed for the introduction of COTS technologies at sea. The Wikipedia essay on the Aegis Cruiser "Yorktown" kind of slides over the fact that the ship remained in active service until 2004 with no other significant Windows-related incidents. USS Yorktown (CG-48) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wow ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What part of gstoddart's post didn't you understand? I don't see any mention of iOS or the app store in that post.
A bit overly defensive, eh?
Re:Wow ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What part of "no fucking kidding" don't you understand?
I didn't say it was the exact same thing, I said it reminded me of a time when another epic technology fail caused a similarly huge cluster fuck.
I don't give a crap what the crash was ... I care that a piece of technology barfed all over the place and left people sitting around going "what the hell do we do now?"
When an airline has to halt operations because of something like their iPad crashing, that's a sure sign that someone hasn't really been doing a sufficient job of testing.
I used to work on a project which dealt with people who do aircraft maintenance .. this is not an industry who collectively takes risks. But apparently their software vendor doesn't see it that way.
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From the referred article: "The pilot came on and said that his first mate’s iPad powered down unexpectedly, and his had too, and that the entire 737 fleet on American had experienced the same behavior". This sounds awfully familiar to the latest IOS vulnerability published just a week ago - http://betanews.com/2015/04/22... [betanews.com]
Someone built one of these (Score:2)
Before we start blaming or laughing at Apple... (Score:5, Interesting)
So what happened? One news item hints at a recent update causing the issue. Where did the update come from? Was iOS updated, or the app? Was this update tested before being rolled out?
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Let's see these AA iPads and the software for what they really are: pieces of business-critical software / hardware. Which means that they have to treat it like any other combination of business critical software and hardware. The entire configuration is frozen, software, OS, patches and all, and any change is thoroughly tested before it is pushed to the production devices.
So what happened? One news item hints at a recent update causing the issue. Where did the update come from? Was iOS updated, or the app? Was this update tested before being rolled out?
They can't freeze the configuration unless they freeze all the airports. These devices carry maps. Maps need to be updated all the time.
What happened here wasn't that an update caused a problem. What happened was that two iPads in a cockpit didn't manage to receive an update that they should have received, so they had to take the iPads into the airport, and the data update worked just fine. Obviously this took time, so the flight got delayed.
I think you might be even older than me (Score:3)
That's not agile.
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What do you think is "weak" about an iPad for the airline's needs?
Their needs were something stable, light, and easily read. The iPad meets all of those goals (yes, including stability, it was AA's own app that crashed).
cost recoup (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how long it takes to recoup the cost of this disruption by continuing to carry lighter manuals.
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Flights get cancelled all of the time. It's just part of the business. Flights get cancelled by computer glitches [duckduckgo.com] all of the time as well, yet you don't see the airlines going back to the pre-punch card tickets. Despite what some posters around here would like you to believe, computers screw up. But we still keep them.
I guess it's like a dysfunctional relationship. We're codependent.
Why do they not have the paper as backup? (Score:3)
What I'm wondering is what would have happened had this iPad crash occurred during the flight post-takeoff. Why do they not carry the paper manuals as a backup in case this sort of thing happens?
Re: Why do they not have the paper as backup? (Score:4, Insightful)
Weight.
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You have to consider scale. In the 1980s, American saved $100,000 a year by removing one olive from each salad they served on their flights. One olive is no big deal, but across their entire operation, the savings added up.
American says they operate 6,700 flights per day [aa.com] or around 2.5 million per year. If they remove 40 lbs of dead tree manuals from each flight, that's 100 million pounds of cargo they aren't paying to carry around every year.
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or just carry some pdfs on a netbook if the weight is a concern?
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What I'm wondering is what would have happened had this iPad crash occurred during the flight post-takeoff. Why do they not carry the paper manuals as a backup in case this sort of thing happens?
Most airlines keep a paper copy of the flight kit in the cockpit. The idea of tablets is so pilots no longer have to carry around 35lb flight bags. I find it hard to believe that American didn't have a backup hardcopy onboard.
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What I'm wondering is what would have happened had this iPad crash occurred during the flight post-takeoff. Why do they not carry the paper manuals as a backup in case this sort of thing happens?
Then.... The ground based controllers will be forced to assist the pilots in navigation to the destination and unless the weather is below VFR minimums, nothing changes for the flight. IF the destination is under IFR rules, then the flight might be forced to divert because they don't have the minimum necessary equipment to do an IFR approach (i.e. a copy of the approach plate) available.
Actually, for most of these pilots, they've flown the same route multiple times in the last few weeks anyway. Likely the
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Umm, that would defeat the whole purpose of using them. Reduced weight of not carrying paper means less fuel, more savings.
If you carry the paper as a backup, then why bother as there will be no savings in fuel or paper.
So before the iPad, did they have a single paper copy? Or did they have more than one, for backup purposes? If they had multiple copies, then replacing all except one with an iPad would be a valid way to save weight, but still have a reliable backup.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Why such crap? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do they put on it? Checklists? Airport charts? Or even approach/departure charts? What if it crashes during taxiing on a busy airport? What if it crashes in the middle of a complicated approach procedure? What if it crashes during checklist and the pilots forget to check a point?
In other words: Why would anyone use cheap crap such as an iPad in a professional passenger airplane? How stupid is that?
Re:Why such crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
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yes, a netbook running a locked down version of linux, with NO update ability, signed binaries and (to be even more sure) put the os in ROM. require some kind of key to do any writes at all to it. have dual sections of rom for redundancy and crc check them; if one is bad, switch to the other.
I could have designed and built a system in probaby 1/10 the time it took for them to PAY OFF APPLE and buy those shiny shitslates.
they used consumer grade 'auto updatable' fashon accessories for mission critical thin
Re:Why such crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Horseshit. You are completely talking out of your ass.
Because they sure as shit didn't do this without approval from the FAA [wikipedia.org]:
Why must everybody on Slashdot keep acting like they could whip up a half-assed solution in a week, or that regulated industries just make shit up as they go?
The reality is, this has not a fucking thing to do with paying off Apple or a hastily thrown together solution.
This sounds entirely like an update from the vendor was poorly tested. In which case, they have some lessons to learn about working in that industry -- which is about as risk averse as you can get. Precisely because the FAA holds them to a very high standard.
But, hey, don't let reality get in the way of your claims you could do a better job in your pajamas.
Re:Why such crap? (Score:5, Funny)
I blame this mind set on the Avenger movies. If Scarlet Johansson can save the world in while running around in spandex underwear, your average Slashdot coder should be able to outperform a couple dozen programmers, managers and QA staff with just a six pack of Mountain Dew and a jumbo bag of Doritos.
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Do you have a better and more reliable tablet system in mind, or are you suggesting that they should have stuck with the 35-pound suitcases full of printed material?
Why is presenting a false dichotomy modded up as "insightful"??
Why not just have a BACKUP system of any sort? As noted by a number of other comments on this thread, what about a netbook with PDFs? Weighs 2 pounds, not 35. (And, for extra security, one could lock it down in various ways to ensure it is stable.)
This isn't an just an Apple issue. It's a simple fact that consumer-grade devices require redundancy. What if the iPad's battery is dead, or it ends up corrupted, or somebody drops the darn th
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It takes less than 1 mins of googling for rugged laptop/tablet or whatever, and I'm not even qualified to make such as decision.
(e.g. panasonic toughtablet)
something pretty vital to ops should have had more consideration than guessing a popular consumer item will do.
What the fuck are they thinking when replacing critical units?
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Here's the wikipedia reference if you want to understand more about what is actually going on. The answers to your questions are pretty easy to find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
It's fairly clear the critical flight operations are not allowed to be carried out on those devices. Once reading that article, does it change your perspective? This seems like 'something didn't work right, people were inconvenienced' and 'American should do a better job of QA and change management'
Maybe they are holding it wrong? (Score:2)
In seriousness now, I won't make fun of the part where they went for the vendor with the most posh consumer tablet, instead of having something customized for this job.
But I am wondering, since it was just supposed to replace the paper manuals, why weren't those manuals the backup? Ok, don't carry them around all the time, but shouldn't they still be available as a backup to take them to the pilots if there is trouble with the ipads instead of just canceling the flight?
It is a Jeppesen software failure (Score:5, Informative)
Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) software is an essential tools for aviation. One iPad can handle multiple charts, maps, and devices which would can weight of more than 20 lbs. Jeppesen software is the American Airlines is the corporate EFB software. A recent update crashed. The Jeppesen tool is a well known company and has Aerospace level of testing. It still failed. There are other EFB tools out there. This has nothing to do with WiFi and everything to do with software development.
Thank you (Score:2)
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This has nothing to do with WiFi and everything to do with software development.
If such materials are so mission-critical that flights have been cancelled and planes required to return to get paper backups, why not just have an electronic backup system OF SOME SORT present? Why not even just have all your charts, maps, etc. in PDF form?
Yeah, it's fun and all to have an app. I'm sure it has a cool interface that makes it easier or quicker to use. But the easy alternative to many pounds of paper books is a bunch of PDF files. Just because your one app crashes, why should you have
So no paper backup anymore? (Score:2)
What happens if the iPrecious crashes mid flight? And if they do still have the old maps, why the delay? Who thought it was a bright idea to create cascading chaos in daily airtraffic just for pilot convenience?
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What happens if the iPrecious crashes mid flight? And if they do still have the old maps, why the delay? Who thought it was a bright idea to create cascading chaos in daily airtraffic just for pilot convenience
If the iPad (I assume you were just trying to make a stupid joke there) crashes mid flight, you reboot it. Then you take the co-pilots iPad.
The information is there in triplicate. Pilot's iPad. Co-pilot's iPad. Bag of papers. As a passenger, you are safe with one copy. The rules say that three copies must be there when the plane takes off, to guarantee that at least one is there when it is needed. The delay happened because there were no three complete and up-to-date copies.
It just works (Score:2)
Well, just about...
Quite an image actually (Score:2)
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That would be "grinds" (or "ground"), not "grounds".
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No, that would be "Crashing App Grinds Dozens of Flights to a Halt".
The proper image should be of large copper cables attached between planes and large metal stakes in the ground.
Alternately... (Score:2)
Just read and memorize the manuals so that it's not an issue.
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Just read and memorize the manuals so that it's not an issue.
Actually, for IFR flight the FAA regulations require that you have current approach plates in the cockpit for reference when flying IFR approaches. It's part of the "minimum equipment" required. So if you don't have them in hard or soft copy, you legally cannot fly the approach, even if you think you memorized the whole thing.
In an emergency, ATC can assist you by providing the necessary information and then authorize you to fly the approach even if you don't have the maps, but you are going to have to a
Im sure someone would have turned on a hotspot (Score:2)
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According to *just* American Airlines, eFlight books save $1.2 million per year.
http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressr... [aa.com]
Re: I wonder (Score:2)
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Airlines hire people *just* to make sure that the paperwork is always updated. For every flight book, which is different for every single plane. Now only a few people have to make sure the pdfs are up to date.
That's a significant additional savings on top of the fuel savings.
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A "no radio" device that has reasonably current copies of everything plus paper (yes, paper) copies of updated pages would weigh less than a pound and would be usage as a backup.
For further redundancy the backup should use a completely different OS.
Why all this trouble? Just test to make sure you have the maps in each of the two I-Pads, that they are current and you can access them before you kick the tires and light the fires...
This check is performed AFTER the update process is completed and the IPad is disconnected from EVERYTHING and BEFORE you push back from the gate. What happened was one or both of the redundant IPads was messed up and they couldn't get the application to run, so they stayed on the ground. Seems pretty much the safe way to do