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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.
Kind of weird, there historically have been similar 'do it the old school way because its more reliable' fallbacks for other things in air transport. What happened to the planes that were mid flight when this bug occurred?
The device not working could have become an issue if something unexpected happened though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> all that weight A few hundred grams? A few Kg?
American once boasted they saved $40,000 in fuel costs a year by deleting an olive from the salads in the passenger meals.
[UPDATE] not sure for fuel, but might be true in olive prices, given these numbers:
Their website says 6,700 flights per day. Let's round it to 6000.
6,000 flights a day -> It's 2,190,000 flights a year x 100 meals per flight x 1 olive saved -> 219,000,000 olives saved.
This list http://sizes.com/food/olives.htm gives about 80-150 olives per pound (depending on the kind of olives), let's say 120 on average.
This makes 219,000,000 olives -> 1,825,000 pounds.
If they get them in bulk for like $1 or even $0.1 per pound, that's still an impressive $182,500 saved per year!
(Not sure if all flights include meals though. I used 100 meals per flight as a guesstimation could be higher/lower depending on the duration of most flights and the percs included).
Kind of weird, there historically have been similar 'do it the old school way because its more reliable' fallbacks for other things in air transport. What happened to the planes that were mid flight when this bug occurred?
There is a place for shiny tech, but the flight deck is not it. Paper worked, and we should go back to it.
Kind of weird, there historically have been similar 'do it the old school way because its more reliable' fallbacks for other things in air transport. What happened to the planes that were mid flight when this bug occurred?
Kind of weird, there historically have been similar 'do it the old school way because its more reliable' fallbacks for other things in air transport. What happened to the planes that were mid flight when this bug occurred?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 involv…
Kind of weird, there historically have been similar 'do it the old school way because its more reliable' fallbacks for other things in air transport. What happened to the planes that were mid flight when this bug occurred?
Obviously though this is a pretty big technical error on the part of Jeppeson (the app provider). It's pretty clear that it shouldn't be possible for the apps to stop working due to something done remotely. There is another provider, called ForeFlight, which I think does a better job, and I was glad to see they weren't involved.
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)
Not a problem, really. FAA regulations require all sorts of backups and emergency procedures. Even my dad's little four-seat general aviation plane has backups for every critical instrument.
This issue prevents you from taking off (out of caution), but if it happened in-flight everyone'd know what to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
For an airliner, yes, the horror.
Why would you want to downplay the dangers of pilots losing access to their flight manuals?