In a bid to go paperless and eliminate the 35lb (16kg) bulk of paper-printed reference material that pilots are required to carry back and forth between flights, American Airlines adopted iPads equipped with applications that distribute flight plans and other data to the crew. The move, which AA estimates would save more than $1.2 million on yearly fuel costs, backfired earlier this month when the app crashed and forced the airline to ground dozens of its jets.
“The pilot told us when they were getting ready to take off, the iPad screens went blank, both for the captain and copilot, so they didn’t have the flight plan,” explains Toni Jacaruso, a passenger on board flight #1654, to Quartz. The unprecedented issue affected the entire 737 fleet using the app called FliteDeck, which is developed by the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen specifically for pilots. Suffice to say, passengers were not amused.
As Jeppesen continues to investigate the issue, an American Airlines spokesman informed the BBC that in some instances, flights needed to return to areas with a stable Wi-Fi to reboot and app and fix the issue. But in others, crews needed to print maps once again in order to commence flying.
It should be known that American Airlines is not the only airline to have replaced paper maps, manuals, and charts with their digital counterparts. United Airlines adopted the iPad long before, while Delta selected Microsoft’s Surface, a sentiment I share.
Aside from decreasing the bulk of the crew’s luggage and fuel expenditure, apps like FlightDeck are important because they reduce flight preparation time and provide swift on-demand usability; but, let the AA incident serve as a warning that too much reliance on technology with no immediate backup plan is prone to disaster.
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