Slashdot Mirror
United Pilots To Use iPads For Navigation
bonch writes "Pilots of United and Continental will ditch flight manuals and charts in favor of 11,000 iPads containing the same data in app form. Replacing 38 pounds of paper materials, the iPads will run an app called Mobile FliteDeck from Jeppesen, a provider of software navigation tools. Alaska Airlines adopted iPads back in May. United estimates a savings of 326,000 gallons of fuel a year due to the lighter load."
The iPad is finally taking off.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
So, I guess the use of personal electronics is OK after all?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Exactly. Besides, commercial shipping's quite likely to be via container ship, which is a much more efficient way than flying it.
And when you factor in the environmental cost of the paper (which needs replacement every so often for updates or repair), it start to look like a relatively decent idea, ecologically.
(Mostly commenting to undo a misclicked moderation, but there's my $0.02)
Thirty-two miles, begin your descent to...
Recalculating...
Jet fuel is comparable to gasoline in price. However there's more than just the jet fuel cost. The cost of printing 40 pounds of flight manuals and updates yearly and the manpower to make sure that the updated pages are put in every pilots flight manuals is not insubstantial, either.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Actually, I was thinking more directly than that. 11,000 iPads are -- without a volume discount (so its a high estmate) -- would be $5.5M roughly. 326,000 gallons fuel -- (if its the same fuel price as you find at the pump) would be roughly $1.1M. So while it might make a lot of sense long term, its going to take 5 years of fuel savings to recoup the investment in iPads. If jet fuel is more expensive than car fuel, it has to be 5x as expensive to make it worth it in a single year.
They save not only the weight of the paper manuals (what the original fuel savings calculation references), but also the ability to roll out updates to all pilots quickly and cheaply. In addition, Jeppesen paper subscriptions are very expensive. Quite a bit cheaper on the iPad, yielding further savings.
Mike
My father-in-law is an amateur pilot who recently explained the scale of this problem to me. It boggles the mind. He said that just in his once a month-or-so flights, he would make back the cost of the ipad over the course of a year, easily.
Every plane has to have the maps and approaches for every airport on their route. But it's more than that. They also need all of the maps for every airport near their route, in case they have to do an emergency landing.
There are a lot of little airports and lots of different approaches. The stack of charts for just the state of Ohio is at least a very thick binder. And, then if you want to fly a little farther on a trip, you get to buy all of those charts, too.
But that's now where it gets complicated. These charts are updated monthly. And the updates are distributed as a "diff" - just the ones that have changed. So you have to go through your binder and replace every single page that's different. And sometimes you find out it was just a temporary change, and it's already changed back.
It's really a big mess for an amateur pilot to take care of. The commercial airlines pay big money just to keep all of their charts in order every month... even though the vast majority of them are never even looked at by the pilots.
So, provided that the battery life is good enough, this is a huge weight/headache/cost reducer for the airlines.
from what i've read the paper manuals are updated every two weeks with a minimum of 3 sets per aircraft. now it's only going to be 1 set. that's a lot of money saved by going to ipad
On the other hand there's the risk that you didn't get last months update, or the binder has two page 32's and no page 31. With 38 pounds of manuals to collate I'm sure some of them get messed up. My guess is the Ipad is more reliable.
Pilot: What's the procedure for a hot restart on a PW4062A at 10,000m?
... WTF? What's a mobi file and why can't my Kobo reader open it?
Co-Pilot: Wait a minute, I just have to find where I downloaded that manual
Pilot (grabs iPad): You idiot! Just get the ePub version and use iBooks!
Co-Pilot: Don't hold it that way it fucks up the antenna!
Pilot: That's the iPhone4 not the iPad
Co-Pilot: Oh yeah. Hey! where the hell are we?
Pilot: How the fuck should I know, this is the WiFi version with no fucking GPS!
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I don't like responding to my own post, but it turns out a later post answered the update question. It's monthly, but only the changed maps are updated. Currently pilots have to go through the paper binder, and swap the updated maps for the old maps.
37195296
I'd be surprised if large corporate airlines didn't have someone who gets far less than a pilots salary that is responsible for updating the map books for the pilots. OTOH, if the pilots are responsible for their own map updates that's still a lot of time over the year that the pilots save using a digitally distributed map book. And since Time = Money, that would need to be incorparted into the cost benefit analysis as well.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
What happens when the ipad dies or doesn't turn on, and the crew *need* to get at that info?
True...almost all flights those books sit there doing nothing, but the *one* time you need them, you *need* them *right the *#$&@* now, and having your ipad be doa or fritz on you would be *A Very Bad Thing*. I'm sure you can save 38 pounds somewhere else on the plane.
You know, I'd bet that United probably didn't think of that at all.
It's crazy how often anonymous commenters come up with really important considerations that the pros overlook.
What happens when the ipad dies or doesn't turn on, and the crew *need* to get at that info?
True...almost all flights those books sit there doing nothing, but the *one* time you need them, you *need* them *right the *#$&@* now, and having your ipad be doa or fritz on you would be *A Very Bad Thing*. I'm sure you can save 38 pounds somewhere else on the plane.
You have two iPads (Captain and first officer). The chance of BOTH iPads failing to work at a critical junction are likely less than the chance the paper charts will get torn / ripped / tossed about the cabin in the event of something very bad happening.
These manuals are for routine work. The emergency checklists are still on paper. Laminated paper.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Does this mean they will all turn them off during takeoff and landing, or is an iPad actually sitting in the cockpit next to the radio stack and other sensitive navigation equipment not as worrysome as one at the back of the plane near the restrooms?
Jet-A (especially at fleet prices) != 100LL. You do know this, right?
Well, when you need to update your charts every time a new airport opens, or closes, or adds a runway, I imagine it's a lot more cost-effective to make a software patch than it is to print out new chart pages.