/ / / / / / / / / / /

American Airlines Pilots Get iPads; Will They Play 'Flight Control' In-Flight?

June 23, 2011 at 9:04 AM | by | Comment (1)

We already knew that Alaska Airlines was working on ditching flight bags for its pilots in favor of iPads in the cockpit—assuming no Facebook, Twitter, or Angry Birds of course. Now it looks like American Airlines is the next carrier to start thinking about electronic flight manuals in the front of the plane.

American has already begun to hand out the tablet computers to some pilots, as they’re thinking that they can save over a million bucks per year by just removing all the paperwork from the flight deck. It probably also improves employee morale—if ever so slightly—as it’s just one less thing that pilots have to lug back and forth between flights and across airports. Apparently flight bags can weigh as much as 35 pounds, so it’s going to save a little bit on gas as well—every little bit helps.

The Federal Aviation Administration originally classified the iPad as one of the electronic doodads that needs to be powered off during taxi and landing, but now they’re cool with it being on as long as it’s for looking at important stuff. Unfortunately, that means that those in the back of the plane—like you and us—will still need to shut down our Words With Friends sessions before landing.

Right now there aren’t any other airlines that have announced plans to make the transition to electronic materials in the cockpit, but we did find a rumor that Continental and United might be the next carriers to do so. Take this with a grain of salt, but over on the Airline Pilots forum there’s talk from pilots—or those pretending to be pilots on the internet—that the newly combined carrier might start testing some kind of tablet device on July 1.

Let’s just hope that there’s a backup battery—or somewhere to plug things in—just in case the devices need a little more juice. Otherwise, this sounds like a good idea that will be quick to catch on.

[Photo: wbaiv]

Comment (1)

Post a Comment

Return to » American Airlines Pilots Get iPads; Will They Play 'Flight Control' In-Flight?


ipad and flight deck

The ipad for use on the flight will not only save several million dollars a year in wasted fuel, it will cut down on back injuries that the pilots incur by carrying the 35 pound kit bags around stowing them in the flight deck. The backup battery is required presently to use any laptop or ipad as an EFB, electronic flight bag. The ipad has about 10 hours of continuous use. On a typical 12 hour duty day the actual use of the ipad might be 1 hour. So, the backup battery is an extremely conservative method of guaranteeing availability of the ipad. Not only that, there will be a minimum of two ipads on the flight deck. With all of that being said, even if the ipads both quit working, the FMC or flight management computers have adequate information for the pilots to navigate to any airport and safely fly any approach to any runway in its database, which is more than adequate. Of course there is also the guard emergency frequency that is available for information about the weather, approaches and phone patches to the airline's technical services and aircraft systems if necessary. Most modern jet transports have 3 separate vhf radios and two hf radios. In addition to that, many have satcom telephones, and wifi voip phones
jaj737 on June 23, 2011 at 11:03 AM #Permalink

Return to » American Airlines Pilots Get iPads; Will They Play 'Flight Control' In-Flight?

Join the conversation!

Not a member? .
Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 3/21/12) and Privacy Policy (effective 3/21/12). © Condé Nast. Your California Privacy Rights. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.
Ad Choices