FAA Approves iPad for Flight Logbooks
The Federal Aviation Administration has given its approval for cockpit flight crews to use Ipads as an alternative to paper aeronautical charts for all phases of a flight.
The FAA says electronic flight materials are not a new thing, but this is the first time Ipad technology has been approved as an alternative to paper maps, including flight plans and runway and taxiway diagrams.
The FAA-approved Ipad apps were developed by a Colorado company, Jeppersen, and are being used by a subsidiary of NetJets, a charter airline.
Before it won FAA approval, the iPad and these flight apps were tested on more than 250 flights, with 55 pilots and 10 different aircraft models.
In Case You Were Wondering:
These iPads are required to be able to get power from the aircraft, so they won’t run out of power during long flights.
With iPad prices starting at $499 and the apps and service packages starting at $76 a year, airborne iPads make good financial sense: comparable systems, using laptops or other electronic devices, can run for $20,000 per device.
Some Alaska Airlines pilots are testing iPads, but the carrier hasn’t yet decided on using them long-term.
Is the FAA worried about pilots being distracted in the cockpit by the one of the other thousands of apps available for Ipads? There are already rules in place governing the use of electronic devices by pilots. (You might remember the October, 2009 incident in which a Northwest Airlines jet overshot the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles. The pilots in that case lost their pilot licenses after they admitted to investigators they were distracted by their laptop computers, causing them to miss the runway.)
Possible Scenario We Don’t Want to See: A pilot updates his Facebook status mid-flight. “Cruising at 37, 000 feet. In-flight movie is “Daddy Day Care” (AGAIN!) Seth says we’re out of peanuts…DAMN! I think we just missed JFK…”