This is wear our reliance on technology gets a little scary. American Airlines has been using iPads in place of the standard reference manuals in cockpits for years. However last night “several dozen” American Airline planes were grounded because pilots iPads crashed. Apparaently right before take off the pilots iPads went black which meant the pilots did not know the flight plan and could not take off. See what happened to these planes after the jump
“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,” Toni Jacaruso, a passenger on American flight #1654 from Dallas to Austin, told Quartz “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,” said passenger Philip McRell, who was also on flight #1654. “It seemed unprecedented and very unfamiliar to the pilots.”
The software and data used by American Airlines come from Jeppesen a subdivision of Boeing Digital Aviation. The switch from paper manuals to iPads was intended to advance the company and make the cockpit more organized. However now you can see that with one little glitch a fleet of 737s can be grounded and denied take off. For now American Airlines is trying to make sure the problem is properly fixed but they suggest for their pilots to go back to carrying around the paper manuals for the time being just in case.
Source: Quartz
