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

qz.com

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

#51

Post by draugadrotten »

pmelendez wrote: post #25
userbinator wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the link in the article: http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-compl... 35 pounds , or around 16kg. That is rather heavy... I'm thinking that they should not all carry iPads, but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software but with the same information, for redundancy purposes. The weight of carrying an iPad and backup device is still tiny…

> , but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software Exactly my thoughts. I am surprised they didn't have any contingency plan as backup.

> they didn't have any contingency plan as backup.

Do you have any Source of your claim that there was no contingency plan?

FAA regulations seems to indicate that there are plans:

"(5) Procedural means. g. Procedural Mitigations. If one or more onboard EFBs fail, resulting in loss of function or the presentation of false or hazardously misleading information, a contingency plan or process will need to be in place to provide the required information."

Page 23, http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/a...

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

#52

Post by CHY872 »

_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.

It's not safety-critical data; that absolutely wouldn't be allowed. If something were to go wrong in flight, the air traffic control would have no problem getting the plane down with no problems.

Furthermore, you have 2 iPads in the cockpit, so it could only be a problem if both fail at the same time. This seems like it'd be a more rare occurrence in the safety case.

In terms of whether open source could have helped, I doubt it very much. Stopping a bug like this (beyond extensive in-house testing) is to largely declare the platform and software bug-free (individual audits typically focus on properties like security, which are easy to target), and a full operating system (including UI) is far too large to effectively audit in that way. Certainly iOS gets far more user milage than any free alternative, which is a big advantage there.

I'd have far more faith in Apple's display system than I would the eminently auditable Gnome (this is all assuming that the FAA did not have access to the iOS source, which is unknown at this time).

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

#53

Post by wodenokoto »

ceejayoz wrote: post #49
0x0 wrote: post #36

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)

> Imagine that happening mid-flight! 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.

More over, isn't this just a manual? I mean, for most normal situations, the pilots know what to do, so even if the backup also died, chances are pretty good that they would land without problems, I imagine.

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

#54

Post by k-mcgrady »

0x0 wrote: post #36

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)

I hope there isn't a guy sitting somewhere who accidentally rejected the certificate :) I think that also locks everyone out. If the iPad's all crashed though it seems unlikely. Although it's definitely something that could be easily missed.

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

#55

Post by nitrogen »

coldtea wrote: post #43
joezydeco wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American once boasted they saved $40,000 in fuel costs a year by deleting an olive from the salads in the passenger meals.

Which sounds like BS / urban legend. $40.000 for (generously) 1 gram x 300 passengers = less than a pound per flight? [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…

I don't think it was fuel costs, I think it was olive costs.

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

#56

Post by k-mcgrady »

wodenokoto wrote: post #53
ceejayoz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine that happening mid-flight! 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.

More over, isn't this just a manual? I mean, for most normal situations, the pilots know what to do, so even if the backup also died, chances are pretty good that they would land without problems, I imagine.

I thought it was the flight plan.

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

#57

Post by maze-le »

elmin wrote: post #48
apalmer wrote: post #34

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?

Aircraft approaches are issued every 90 days. To stay up to date you need to have a book of these 'plates' for every region of the U.S, or a subscription to a service that sends you paper updates. If this happened in flight they would either get ATC to read them the plate, or check with ATC that whatever outdated plate they had was still accurate. Obviously though this is a pretty big technical error on the part of J…

Thanks for elaborating on the issue. I didn't know that the approaches are issued in that short time-interval. That makes the use of an app like this at least comprehensible.

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

#58

Post by imglorp »

ithingsnoway wrote: post #44
apalmer wrote: post #34

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?

It is outrageous that flights could be stopped because of a reliance of shiny iThings and the software running on them. Paper versions do not run out of juice. There is a place for shiny tech, but the flight deck is not it. Paper worked, and we should go back to it.

Paper comprises an entire suitcase. Charts, airport docs, aircraft manuals, maint logs, regulations, etc etc. Updates are frequent and also paper. The fuel savings alone from not carrying the paper is substantial. As long as there's a backup tablet, it should be okay. If they get lost they can always call in for vectors.

ref: http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=20295&item=124327

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

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

jackweirdy wrote: post #46
apalmer wrote: post #34

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?

ADS-B is unauthenticated, plenty of security people are terrified of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY2uiLfXmaI

All the threats mentioned there - jamming, spoofing, impersonation, etc. - can already happen with the unencrypted radio calls it's supplementing. With a hundred dollars or so worth of radio, you can hop on your local airport's ATC frequency and hold the mic down, or pose as the controller.

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

#60

Post by 0x0 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #54
0x0 wrote: post #36

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)

I hope there isn't a guy sitting somewhere who accidentally rejected the certificate :) I think that also locks everyone out. If the iPad's all crashed though it seems unlikely. Although it's definitely something that could be easily missed.

Ah, but when you read stories like this, I wouldn't trust the reporter (or even the interviewee) to be 100% accurate. "All crashed" could mean anything from a dead battery to being PIN locked to failure to launch because of an expired code signing cert :P
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