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:
- The article details a pilot's frustrating and potentially dangerous experiences with a critical iPad aviation app (Jeppesen-FD), citing frequent crashes, data corruption, and unreliable chart access that necessitated reliance on paper backups.
- Recurring app malfunctions and complex troubleshooting steps, often encountered in critical flight situations, suggest potential shortcomings in software quality and testing, with the pilot alleging that development deadlines may be prioritized over software integrity.
- Customer support interactions were often unhelpful, providing complex workarounds or shifting blame to the pilot, highlighting a disconnect between developers/support and real-world pilot operational needs for reliable tools in the cockpit.
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