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FAA Permits American Airlines To Use iPads In Cockpit "In All Phases of Flight"
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.
Have you ever seen the reams and reams of paper in 3 ring binders that comprise the low and high route maps that a pilot must have on hand, as well as the approach plates needed to do a proper landing?
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.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I worked for a startup that designed a tablet-style device to hold flight manuals and maps for airliners. That was back in 1996. The device was bulkier than an ipad but did not weight 16Kg, and had a respectable 800X600 color display. I'm pretty sure tablets and/or laptops have been used since then in the cockpit - so the news here is proabably that the FAA approving yet another device.
It's the rolling bags of charts they have to carry with them whenever they fly. There are regulations that specify what charts they have to carry; all in all, a "Jep Bag" is about 35 pounds, and both pilots carry one. If they're using a Electronic Flight Bag app for the iPad, that's a pretty straightforward conversion of mass and very specific savings.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
The best argument I've heard for the "real" reason you aren't allowed to use electronics during takeoff and landing isn't EMI or any other "technical" reason. It is because the crew wants two things. 1) Less distractions for the passengers. If an emergency were to arise, they want your full, undivided attention. No one saying "what was that? I was listening to Beiber". 2) Less items flying around in the event of a bad landing/takeoff. Accidents happen and an iPod at 200 MPH can probably ding you pretty good.
Hi, I work with the FAA, including on projects involving Electronic Flight Bag research and testing.
Aeronautical charts in the US have a 56-day publication cycle. That means every 56 days, your paper charts are (possibly) out of date and should be replaced. Usually they're not, as most things DON'T change from one cycle to another, but there are always changes. So if you follow the approach procedures for a terminal in your flight bag, you may be following incorrect procedures, which at the very least is going to make ATC grumpy and in a worst case scenario could seriously impact safety. An iPad based solution means up-to-date charts can be loaded in seconds during pre-flight, instead of manually having to replace possibly dozens of individual manuals located in a heavy, bulky bag. Twice, since both pilots are required to have a copy.
So, while as a "professional researcher," you can probably feel secure in the knowledge that the ten-year-old mass spectrometer you're working with can be safely used with the manual that came with it ten years ago, the same thing is not the least bit true in the aviation world.
That being said, I'd much rather an up-to-date electronic manual, even for older hardware. Every manual has errors in it which can be hopefully corrected in future revisions...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The checklists shouldn't be going anywhere. Disclaimer: I dont fly for AA, but I did fly for another airline. The pilots carry docs and the plane carries docs. The plane should have at least 2 checklists and a quick reference handbook, in printed form, in the cockpit. The checklists cover all normal procedures for all phases of flight. The QRH has all of the abnormal checklists. The absolutely vital emergency procedures are printed also in the QRH but the primary source is the pilots memory (things that need to be accomplished ASAP before there is time to consult the book).
What the electronic flight bag (EFB) is going to replace is the junk the pilots carry. My flight bag had 2 2" binders full of nothing but approach plates, a 1" binder with our hub airport approach plates in it, a 1" foldout thing with all of the enroute maps, a 1" binder with the company flight ops (essentially 14 CFR 121 plus whatever opspecs the airline has approval for), a 2" binder with procedures and checklists (serves as backup for the checklists and QRH that the airplane carries), a 2" binder with our collective bargaining agreement in it. Not carried was another 2" binder that were all of the details of the aircraft systems, it was not required to be carries and there just wasnt room for it. The EFB replaces all of that into a tablet form factor.
On a typical flight the only things in that bag that get touched are the high enroute chart I need, the airport diagram and company page for the departure airport and the approach plate, airport diagram and company page for the arrival airport. The checklist used is the laminated one that belongs to the airplane. If there is an abnormal, the QRH belonging to the airplane is consulted (in conjunction with other docs on the airplane: the MEL book and the logbook).
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.
For in-flight, the ban on cellular phones is actually technical in reason: each cell tower can only handle so many connected devices at once, even if they're not actively communicating with the tower. Cell phones use line-of-sight frequencies, which means that on the ground, any given phone is only going to see (and consume "slots" on) a handful of towers. In the air, every phone that's turned on will blanket a huge number of towers. For one of two phones this doesn't matter at all (so yeah, turning on your phone in an emergency is fine), but if people didn't turn their phone radios off, every passenger in every plane over a given city would be adding to the load of every single tower.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Damnit, I had mod points yesterday.
I agree with your points and just wanted to add one more thing. There are documented cases where a passenger's consumer electronic device was verified to cause interference with one or more of the plane's systems. The crew located the passenger with the device, had them turn it off and saw that the problem went away. Then, for good measure, had them turn it back on and the problem reappeared. This is proof via the scientific method that it is possible for a device to interfere with an electronic system in a commercial aircraft, and frankly that's enough for me.
I'm a private pilot who, prior to learning about the event I just described, was also a strong believer that the ban was more to keep passengers from annoying each other than it was about safety.