Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Dave, Nothing Can Go Wrong.....Wrong.....Wrong; Agony Air Edition

Having one's aviation charts and approach plates and manuals on a tablet is a really nifty idea.

Until it doesn't work.
American Airlines flights experienced significant delays this evening after pilots’ iPads—which the airline uses to distribute flight plans and other information to the crew—abruptly crashed. “Several dozen” flights were affected by the outage, according to a spokesperson for the airline.
One wonders what would have happened if the flight crew's iPads had shit the bed in flight.

7 comments:

Nangleator said...

I'm trying to imagine how my 19 y/o flight instructor would have reacted to me relying on an electronic gadget for my flight information. I'm thinking he wouldn't have stopped slapping me for an hour or two.

Not that I'd survive the airport owners' wrath.

Old NFO said...

I like things that require NO batteries when I'm putting my life on the line...

Marc said...

I somehow think it is the application which the airline uses, and not the iPad itself which is to blame. There have been a lot of updates to apps after 8.3 came out, and I"d say since 8.3 was released weeks ago, it was probably a recent fleet wide update of the program which they use which is the culprit.

CenterPuke88 said...

The indications were that the problem was on the B737-800 fleet, and with a third-party app. Several flight had to roll back to the gate so the crew could get a Wi-Fi connection to download needed data.

However, a crew stating that the iPad "powered-down" unexpectedly is interesting too.

Comrade Misfit said...

Old NFO, an E-6B or a CR-5 and paper charts works for me.

Sarah said...

Uh oh... someone at Jeppesen is s**ten bricks.
http://ww1.jeppesen.com/main/corporate/aviation/products/flitedeck-pro/starter-kit.jsp

It's supposed to be *better* than foreflight, not worse. To be fair, the ipad is prone to shutting itself down if you leave it in direct sunlight too long - gets hot. But this sounds like a software problem.

If it happened in flight, no big deal. They'd just ask ATC to read them the departure/star and approach plates. JFK would probably not be amused..

Eck! said...

Oh, I can hear NY approach now. It would not be pretty.

I'm one to use every gadget available to me. Key word is USE
and not RELY on. Things like Loran was backed by VOR, gps was backed by loran and VOR. Belt, meet suspenders.

It sounds more like the old days when hardware people would ignore software people who didn't understand hardware people. Oh, and the poor customer had to suffer with both.

Eck!