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.

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[Sparticus789]

So when can I start using my iPad during "all phases of the flight"?

Re:How about just an iPhone and save even more?

[vlm]

The backup plan is you ask the ATC. Ask a pilot. Even "couple hours training" noob like myself knows that. Its considered extremely bad form to tell the ATC "I'm too Fing lazy to look up the approach plate, whats the ILS freq again?" but if you have an equipment breakdown they have procedures and policies in place for generations now to help you out.

As for plane docs, it doesn't really matter as long as the ipad is 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.

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.

Re:Electronic Subsitutions Not Suitable for Indust

[tlhIngan]

As a professional researcher, it's much more reliable to use the paper version of manuals and hardware documentation.

I'm all for consolidating text and tasks to a convenient gizmo for personal use, but when it comes to work, you can't be at the mercy of a power outage, dead battery, virus, etc, when you need to reference something important. We keep paper logbooks for a reason, and I'm surprised to hear the airline industry is forsaken what works flawlessly for snappy, computer interfaces.

Power outage - well, if the plane's running on batteries, I think you have a bigger problem than worrying about following the approach plates in the iPad. And I'm sure the cockpit can have neat little things called 'charging ports' so your iPad can be charged from aircraft power.

Though, for the vast majority of flight, the ipad will sit in the flight bag unused so as long as it's reasonably charged (more than 10% battery - which would give roughly an hour's worth of usage, which is plenty for most flights).

Virus - well, ATC systems often use Windows, and those are a touch more vulnerable than say, an iPad. We are talking walled garden here after all (and "jailbreaking" is a pretty foreign term for them).

The *interesting* thing is the iPad, while there are a few aviation apps (ported from iOS) for Android, it seems the vast majority concentrate on iOS, and the iPad specifically (very little for the iPhone).

The aviation world has gone nuts for the iPad, primarily because an iPad with an AHRS system (total cost under $2000) can serve as a pretty good GPS system with a larger screen and better battery life. It beats having to retrofit a glass cockpit in your plane (if one's available - you're looking at easily $50k+ all in), a penel-mount GPS unit ($10k+), and cost-competitive with many handheld GPS units (around $2k). Except the iPad can also help you file your flight plan, do flight planning, and has a larger screen (and is more user (pilot) friendly). About the biggest complaint is the inability to use it with gloves.

You should check out the aviation mags from around 2010 or so - they all went ga-ga for the iPad and possibilities for pilots. These days, reading those mags you'd think every pilot uses one.

Re:Red herring

[IndustrialComplex]

I've designed avionics and radios for aircraft. We didn't just care about a few lbs, we cared about everything down to the weight of the gaskets that sealed the antenna mounts.

Hell, I remember having to verify that the mass of the gas capsule for the lightning arrestor device was not included in the overall mass of the device itself. The manufacturer of the lighting arrestor didn't even know and had to refer to their engineering drawings to be sure. I think it ended up being something like 0.1-0.2 ounces.

Every ounce you shave from the aircraft is an ounce of fuel you can carry, or a fraction of fuel you don't have to burn. Over many thousand flights and many thousand miles, it adds up.

Let's put it this way, if you went to UPS and told them that you could eliminate 0.5 miles from the routes their drivers take, you would have a multi-million dollar idea in your hands.