Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 124 posts

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#31

Post by lucaspiller »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #14
nomercy400 wrote: post #6

Don't forget about the savings for American Airlines. No more paper maintenance manuals, saving lots of weight, on every flight. The ipad powering down will probably result in a claim to the supplier of the ipads. Of course it is embarrassing, but think of the environmental benefits of saving all that weight.

> all that weight A few hundred grams? A few Kg?

My wife works as cabin crew for a major international airline. A few years ago she was grateful that they abolished the requirement that all crew (an A380 has around 30 crew) had to bring their manuals for every flight. The book was about 3kg and rather bulky so took up most of the room in her flight bag where she was also supposed to keep a jacket, jumper, pair of shoes (they switch from heels when boarding to flats during flight), hat, make up and various bits of documentation.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#32

Post by draugadrotten »

SixSigma wrote: post #22
lo_fye wrote: post #18

"The issue was centered around an update that was pushed 4 days ago" - that's an app bug, not an iPad bug.

> 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. user mode programs causing power down is not an app bug

> that the entire 737 fleet on American had experienced the same behavior.

That seems to be inaccurate. American Airlines confirms "several dozen flights" which is probably less.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/apple-ipad...

And the fix was available through nearest Wi-Fi. Leaving cockpit a few minutes. The horror!

"In some cases, the flight has had to return to the gate to access a Wi-Fi connection to fix the issue. " http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/28/8511993/ipad-issue-grounds...

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#33

Post by _broody »

bvrlt wrote: post #12

Thanks for the better title on HN. If you look at most reports on the issue, the title mentions "An iPad glitch" making it sound the iPads are at fault rather than a software issue. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/apple-ipad... http://qz.com/393909/american-airlines-planes-are-grounded-b... http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/29/technology/american-airlines...

Yes, the app crashed. That was no doubt an app bug. The iPads also crashed. That's eyebrow-raising, and definitely an iPad glitch.

The airline will fix the bug and it won't happen again. But relying on a closed, unauditable platform to keep any sort of safety-critical data in these conditions seems absolutely unconvincing to me.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#35

Post by notahacker »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #20
humanrebar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like the estimate to include money and time lost by passengers, but that's probably hoping for too much.

The DOT actually has estimates of the value of time lost by passengers, used for economic analyses of delays. See this PDF, page 19: http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/vot_guidance_092... Your time is worth $45-57 an hour, depending on if your travel is personal or business-related.

Seems a tad generous considering a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts the average amount contributed to GDP per US citizen per hour at around $6.

From an airline point of view, if their schedule is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the delays without flight cancellations and the delays are insufficiently long to require passengers to be compensated, the biggest costs will be additional fuel if the delays involve the aircraft being put in a holding pattern at the other end and additional time or penalty charges levied by the airports. Staffing isn't that big a deal even if they're on overtime.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#36

Post by 0x0 »

Just a wild guess: Could the enterprise in-house code signing certificate have expired? That would lock out the app. Imagine that happening mid-flight!

(The iOS enterprise in-house code signing certificates, which only Apple can issue, always seem to come with 1-2 year hard expiration dates)

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#37

Post by CaptG »

If you're curious, check out https://www.foreflight.com/, it's available from the app store and is marketed towards GA pilots. I've used it with some success on a domestic US flight with the inflight WIFI.

EDIT: I just checked ForeFlight had a version update on 4/27. I doubt American is using the same software on their tablets, but then again you never know.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#38

Post by ksherlock »

CaptG wrote: post #37

If you're curious, check out https://www.foreflight.com/ , it's available from the app store and is marketed towards GA pilots. I've used it with some success on a domestic US flight with the inflight WIFI. EDIT: I just checked ForeFlight had a version update on 4/27. I doubt American is using the same software on their tablets, but then again you never know.

The article says the software was from Jeppesen/Boeing.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#39

Post by ifewalter32 »

_broody wrote: post #33
bvrlt wrote: post #12

Thanks for the better title on HN. If you look at most reports on the issue, the title mentions "An iPad glitch" making it sound the iPads are at fault rather than a software issue. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/apple-ipad... http://qz.com/393909/american-airlines-planes-are-grounded-b... http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/29/technology/american-airlines...

Yes, the app crashed. That was no doubt an app bug. The iPads also crashed. That's eyebrow-raising, and definitely an iPad glitch. The airline will fix the bug and it won't happen again. But relying on a closed, unauditable platform to keep any sort of safety-critical data in these conditions seems absolutely unconvincing to me.

I'm interested in a better solution/idea if you have any.

Re: Some American Airlines planes are grounded because the pilots’ iPads crashed

#40

Post by skywhopper »

_broody wrote: post #33
bvrlt wrote: post #12

Thanks for the better title on HN. If you look at most reports on the issue, the title mentions "An iPad glitch" making it sound the iPads are at fault rather than a software issue. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/apple-ipad... http://qz.com/393909/american-airlines-planes-are-grounded-b... http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/29/technology/american-airlines...

Yes, the app crashed. That was no doubt an app bug. The iPads also crashed. That's eyebrow-raising, and definitely an iPad glitch. The airline will fix the bug and it won't happen again. But relying on a closed, unauditable platform to keep any sort of safety-critical data in these conditions seems absolutely unconvincing to me.

These enterprise apps aren't vetted by Apple, so they could very well be using unsafe APIs Apple doesn't recommend and would block during an App Store review process. And there are tons of ways to crash machines from userspace. Also, it's likely the iPads are running an old version of iOS. And for all we know, the iPads are jailbroken and all bets are off. Finally, it sounds like AA's software provider was able to deliver a patch, so I don't think it's just a matter of iOS being "unauditable". What OS would they be using that met your auditability standards? Even Android is not totally open.
Post reply on HN