iPad App Glitch Causes Airlines Flight Delays

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At least the only thing that crashed was the captain's iPad. This kind of makes you wonder how pilots flew planes before there were iPads? :rolleyes: Thanks to DarkStar_WNY for the heads up.

American Airlines said a glitch in an Apple iPad application used by its pilots has caused flight delays this evening, affecting about two dozen flights. Pilots began experiencing a problem with the software that contains mapping and flight planning information at roughly 7 pm Pacific time Tuesday, a spokesman for the airline said.
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I can hear it now. The flight attendant calling out on the P/A, "Does anyone know how to use an iPad? Anyone?"
 
Well the airlines have been using the iPads for several years and this is the first significant issue ... one can have a reasonable debate on which of the three platforms is best for the pilots (iOS, Android, Windows) but there is no question that replacing the 100 pounds of books they used to carry with an electronic device is better for them and for the passengers ;)
 
kbrickley said:
Well the airlines have been using the iPads for several years and this is the first significant issue ... one can have a reasonable debate on which of the three platforms is best for the pilots (iOS, Android, Windows) but there is no question that replacing the 100 pounds of books they used to carry with an electronic device is better for them and for the passengers ;)
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*Plane crashing, need technical info*

"Uh, Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"We forget to charge the iPad before we took off."

"Well shit."
 
Laureolus said:
*Plane crashing, need technical info*

"Uh, Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"We forget to charge the iPad before we took off."

"Well shit."
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Plane crashing ... need technical help

Damn ... where is the index for this thing ... crap it says see volume 7 ... where is volume seven :p

having a searchable electronic device is reasonable and they did have to get FAA approval before they made the switch ;)
 
They must have been holding it wrong, or maybe it was because of their skinny uniform.

This is what you get when you use a buggy consumer level device from a trending company.
 
Idiocracy, here we come! Captain: "Let's see, the plane has been checked out and is perfectly functional however, our automated flight tracking and procedure lists won't load so, I can't take off." "This would be embarrassing if I was a professional." :(
 
Magnus said:
Crises averted. 1.2 million dollars saved. I'm sure the passengers affected were happy to have contributed their portion to the airlines bottom line.
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The pilot unions wanted it as well to save lugging the 40 pounds of paper needed without the tablet ... one can certainly discuss which tablet is best for cockpit usage ... Airlines are using both iPads and Surface tablets (there are probably some that use Android as well) ... using digital documents is the right solution and it has worked well for the two years it has been used (testing began before that) ... I liked the comment one of the pilots made about the flight plan paper documents for DFW to NRT stretching 28 feet (9 meters) ... how manageable is that :eek:
 
kbrickley said:
The pilot unions wanted it as well to save lugging the 40 pounds of paper needed without the tablet ... one can certainly discuss which tablet is best for cockpit usage ... Airlines are using both iPads and Surface tablets (there are probably some that use Android as well) ... using digital documents is the right solution and it has worked well for the two years it has been used (testing began before that) ... I liked the comment one of the pilots made about the flight plan paper documents for DFW to NRT stretching 28 feet (9 meters) ... how manageable is that :eek:
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How about taking responsibility and pride in the job you do? It doesn't matter a flying f*** what the intentions were, it only matters what the performance is. How about a back up electrical device using a different app? I'm a Chef. Do you think it's ok to tell a room full of people, "I'm sorry, your meal has been delayed for an hour because we can't get our recipes to load?"
 
Magnus said:
How about taking responsibility and pride in the job you do? It doesn't matter a flying f*** what the intentions were, it only matters what the performance is. How about a back up electrical device using a different app? I'm a Chef. Do you think it's ok to tell a room full of people, "I'm sorry, your meal has been delayed for an hour because we can't get our recipes to load?"
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Having multiple devices doesn't matter if the web service driving data to the devices goes down. Since a few dozen flights were affected, this failure likely had nothing to do with being an iPad and everything to do with some faulty code along the path.

And flying a plane isn't anything like being a chef. You can ad lib a lot when cooking, you can't do that with flight information.
 
I'm surprised prior posting in this thread are blaming the device. Sure it messed up but this is the IT departments fuck up.

I don't blame outlook when our mail server goes down, that's what all the old crusty people do.
 
Magnus said:
How about taking responsibility and pride in the job you do? It doesn't matter a flying f*** what the intentions were, it only matters what the performance is. How about a back up electrical device using a different app? I'm a Chef. Do you think it's ok to tell a room full of people, "I'm sorry, your meal has been delayed for an hour because we can't get our recipes to load?"
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So if your kitchen couldn't be checked for say cleanliness and you didn't know if the dishes and silverware were clean, and you didn't know if the food was spoiled or not, you'd just feed people anyway?

Checking that things are correct before doing something dangerous sounds prudent to me.

As for backup apps, you suggest that they have an entirely different app that needs to be 100% feature matching, but written differently so they can't have the same errors? Errors that shouldn't even be there in the first place?
 
Magnus said:
How about taking responsibility and pride in the job you do? It doesn't matter a flying f*** what the intentions were, it only matters what the performance is. How about a back up electrical device using a different app? I'm a Chef. Do you think it's ok to tell a room full of people, "I'm sorry, your meal has been delayed for an hour because we can't get our recipes to load?"
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Yes because using your analogy, chefs have never had a delay in getting food out for any reason. Whoops we ran out of the chicken, whoops we had a large party that took all of our time so you guys need to wait, whoops someone didn't come in so we're short staffed, whoops our POS machine is down so there's a delay in getting orders to the kitchen.
 
ocellaris said:
Having multiple devices doesn't matter if the web service driving data to the devices goes down. Since a few dozen flights were affected, this failure likely had nothing to do with being an iPad and everything to do with some faulty code along the path.

And flying a plane isn't anything like being a chef. You can ad lib a lot when cooking, you can't do that with flight information.
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Why would you make check lists and data resources limited to real time updates? The old system couldn't be updated in real time. Who cares where the faulty code was along the path? Regardless of where or how the problem occurred, it still affected the service to customers and jobs of countless employees. The bottom line is lack of performance. In my world, people get fired for that.

You're right about being a Chef being different. I can offer people alternatives and choices. Maybe those passengers affected could be offered flights on other airlines? Yeah, right.
 
Trimlock said:
I'm surprised prior posting in this thread are blaming the device. Sure it messed up but this is the IT departments fuck up.

I don't blame outlook when our mail server goes down, that's what all the old crusty people do.
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Sadly, I'm not really surprised any more.
 
nutzo said:
They must have been holding it wrong, or maybe it was because of their skinny uniform.

This is what you get when you use a buggy consumer level device from a trending company.
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There are a lot of businesses that have turned to iPads and those companies don't consider it a consumer electronics device at this point. Besides that, the alternatives in a similar form factor aren't exactly mature products either. Windows 8 might not be a bad option, but the interface is a turn off for a lot of people who want functionality and productivity. Android is a hobby-shop OS laced with Google spyware. Outside of that, there's in-house products, but they're not gonna be as cost-effective as an off the shelf solution.
 
Magnus said:
Why would you make check lists and data resources limited to real time updates? The old system couldn't be updated in real time. Who cares where the faulty code was along the path? Regardless of where or how the problem occurred, it still affected the service to customers and jobs of countless employees. The bottom line is lack of performance. In my world, people get fired for that.

You're right about being a Chef being different. I can offer people alternatives and choices. Maybe those passengers affected could be offered flights on other airlines? Yeah, right.
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Depends on what caused the problems on whether someone gets fired ... if it was a software glitch from the supplier at Boeing who writes the software you report this to them ... if it was the AA IT group I doubt that people on this forum would suggest we fire the IT department every time there was a server glitch :eek:

Also, to put this in perspective ... there are about 6700 daily flights on AA ... assume that this glitch affected 50 flights ... so 0.74% of their flights were delayed by this ... on average airline related delays affect about 6-7% of their daily flights ... I am sure this inconvenienced a few travelers but flight delays happen ... I have had flights delayed anywhere from a few minutes to a few days ... it is unfortunate when a delay happens but I would rather a plane take off with everything working perfectly (including the cabin tablet) than take a chance
 
kbrickley said:
Depends on what caused the problems on whether someone gets fired ... if it was a software glitch from the supplier at Boeing who writes the software you report this to them ... if it was the AA IT group I doubt that people on this forum would suggest we fire the IT department every time there was a server glitch :eek:

Also, to put this in perspective ... there are about 6700 daily flights on AA ... assume that this glitch affected 50 flights ... so 0.74% of their flights were delayed by this ... on average airline related delays affect about 6-7% of their daily flights ... I am sure this inconvenienced a few travelers but flight delays happen ... I have had flights delayed anywhere from a few minutes to a few days ... it is unfortunate when a delay happens but I would rather a plane take off with everything working perfectly (including the cabin tablet) than take a chance
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It's a matter of perspective. One of the things I like most about my job is it's intimate and personal. Corporations in any industry don't do "personal." Much of the disdain "users" have for IT is the isolation they have from the outside customers whose business provides them with jobs. It's that isolation that creates metrics like you stated as indicative of job performance. It is management's responsibility to create metrics that make sense for their business rather than the current situation of allowing departments to set their own standards. The difficulty is size and scope of operations and the knowledge/experience to manage them. That is why the corporate structure decreases performance over time.
 
The fact that the iPad caused flight delays is the issue. 40 lbs of books wouldn't have done that and the pilots would have figured out what to do. Now they just throw up their hands and say, "Now what?". Pathetic. This is Idiocracy! That movie is becoming true every day.
 
amddragonpc said:
The fact that the iPad caused flight delays is the issue. 40 lbs of books wouldn't have done that and the pilots would have figured out what to do. Now they just throw up their hands and say, "Now what?". Pathetic. This is Idiocracy! That movie is becoming true every day.
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There are certainly pros and cons to every technology conversion, especially as it relates to a conversion from paper to digital ... this appears to be the first major issue caused by these digital flight tablets in the 2+ years they have been in use ... we could certainly abandon a technology that benefits both the pilots and the airlines because of a single issue, just as we could stop using email and switch back to snail mail because there is a single glitch with an email server ;) ... OR they can learn from the mistake (which I am sure they will) and make the technology even more robust :cool:
 
amddragonpc said:
The fact that the iPad caused flight delays is the issue. 40 lbs of books wouldn't have done that and the pilots would have figured out what to do. Now they just throw up their hands and say, "Now what?". Pathetic. This is Idiocracy! That movie is becoming true every day.
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Agreed 100%. This isn't the device's fault, or the IT department. This is our society's moronic notion that technology replaces training, experience, critical thinking, and common sense.
 
nutzo said:
They must have been holding it wrong, or maybe it was because of their skinny uniform.

This is what you get when you use a buggy consumer level device from a trending company.
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Buggy? I'm sure the FAA isn't using the auto-updates and having issues just sprung on them. They probably go through a lot of internal testing before hitting the cockpit (sorry... flightdeck). I haven't seen too many consumer iPad's be too buggy other than with new releases. After a while, they are pretty rock solid. I can see why the FAA went with them over the competition.

First time this was an issue since deployment? I think they are doing pretty good...
 
Gweenz said:
Agreed 100%. This isn't the device's fault, or the IT department. This is our society's moronic notion that technology replaces training, experience, critical thinking, and common sense.
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Then you memorize hundreds of pages of information every day and come back to me. Do you guys even have a clue of what you're talking about anymore? They would have still have relied on charts, but instead of being on one device they would have had hundreds of laws of paper to go through.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Then you memorize hundreds of pages of information every day and come back to me. Do you guys even have a clue of what you're talking about anymore? They would have still have relied on charts, but instead of being on one device they would have had hundreds of laws of paper to go through.
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You mean, like the airline industry has been doing since its inception? Memorizing text is something that people in high-stress, high-responsibility positions have been doing for hundreds of years. You WANT them doing this. It weeds out the people who are incapable. They don't have to memorize that much text every day anyway, so I have no idea what you are referring to.

Paper charts do not rely on batteries, or internet connections, or idiot end user's abilities to use them. It's not bad to rely on technology but it IS bad to rely 100% on technology with no backup plan. That is OVER-reliance on technology that anybody in the IT industry can tell you is nowhere near as reliable as the average user thinks it is. It is all held together with bailing wire and it will fail eventually. An iPad causing flight delays is so black and white an example of this that if you don't see it, it is you who does not have a clue.
 
Gweenz said:
Paper charts do not rely on batteries, or internet connections, or idiot end user's abilities to use them. It's not bad to rely on technology but it IS bad to rely 100% on technology with no backup plan.
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The whole airline is being flown with technology. Planes fly correctly at altitude using technology, flight traffic is all directed with technology, and all flight tickets are booked with technology. Knock out all of the computers being used for the commercial airline business and nothing flies. The backup for computers is often just more computers.
 
ocellaris said:
The whole airline is being flown with technology. Planes fly correctly at altitude using technology, flight traffic is all directed with technology, and all flight tickets are booked with technology. Knock out all of the computers being used for the commercial airline business and nothing flies. The backup for computers is often just more computers.
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Yes, proven systems that have been in place and proven to work, developed over a hundred years. How does the ipad improve the system?
 
ocellaris said:
The whole airline is being flown with technology. Planes fly correctly at altitude using technology, flight traffic is all directed with technology, and all flight tickets are booked with technology. Knock out all of the computers being used for the commercial airline business and nothing flies. The backup for computers is often just more computers.
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To be clear, nowhere did I say that technology should be removed from the airline industry. I believe that you reach a peak level of efficiency with regards to technology integration. Anything more than that is subject to the laws of diminishing returns. Opening up these previously closed systems to the internet and emerging technology is a huge mistake.
 
Gweenz said:
To be clear, nowhere did I say that technology should be removed from the airline industry. I believe that you reach a peak level of efficiency with regards to technology integration. Anything more than that is subject to the laws of diminishing returns. Opening up these previously closed systems to the internet and emerging technology is a huge mistake.
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To be clear, they are not using these iPads to control or fly the plane ... also, they are not yet using them for real time information (although that will likely come after the FAA fully evaluates that usage on the flight deck) ... and that is probably a good thing for the pilots to have (real time weather radar, etc)

The iPads are used to store the maps, paperwork and manifests, weather reports, etc ... they replace a bulky 40 pound flight bag that the pilots used to have to lug into the flight deck area ... one advantage of the digital system is that it is easier to keep things like maps and other real time reports up to date ... disadvantage is they can fail, but they normally have more than one

In two years of usage this seems to be the first significant issue and it only affected less than 1% of their flights for a single day ... it occurred on the ground, not in flight, so no ones safety was compromised ... and it only resulted in a delay (unclear for how long) ... airlines typically have 6-7% of their daily flights delayed due to mechanical issues, paperwork issues, flight crew availability, etc ... I once was on a flight that was delayed for about 30 minutes because the technician doing the maintenance forgot to sign a form ... the paper system isn't totally without faults either ;)
 
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