Pilots love their iPads, but this pilot’s experience with one app makes us wonder if there’s a bigger potential fall in going paperless than most of us believe.
Tales of ipad mischief
There is a lot of talk about the paperless cockpit these days, and some airlines have even embraced the iPad as a replacement for a bag full of charts. I have been committed to this for several years, and the best-integrated, most reliable package I found before Jepp FD was from Anywhere Map, who make a bulletproof product, and recently announced a new, cross-platform product for iPad and Android.
Key Takeaways:
- A pilot recounts numerous critical failures and data corruption with the Jeppesen FD iPad app, highlighting its unreliability for "paperless" navigation and the continued necessity of paper backups.
- The author criticizes Jeppesen's technical support as inconsistent and suggests a corporate prioritization of release cycles over software integrity based on direct interactions.
- Jeppesen, in response, acknowledges a past data issue but primarily emphasizes pilot responsibility for pre-flight data verification and asserts strong quality controls, denying that release cycles override quality.
- The article serves as a cautionary tale against over-reliance on unregulated cockpit technology and stresses the importance of maintaining paper backups due to the current reliability issues with digital solutions.
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