AA blames ‘third-party application’.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: American Airlines experienced major delays on Tuesday after Apple iPads — which the airline uses to proliferate flight plans and other information to flight crews — suddenly crashed, leaving pilots without some of their most crucial cockpit resources.
“Several dozen” flights were affected by the outage, according to a spokesperson for the airline.
“The pilot came on and said that his first mate’s iPad powered down unexpectedly, and his had too, and that the entire 737 fleet on American had experienced the same behavior,” passenger Philip McRell, who was also on flight #1654 from Dallas to Austin, told Quartz. “It seemed unprecedented and very unfamiliar to the pilots.”
Other passengers in New York and Chicago also reported being affected by the outage.
American Airlines has since found a fix for the problem and released an official statement regarding the technical difficulties:
This issue was with the third-party application, not the iPad, and caused some departure delays last night and this morning. Our pilots have been able to address the issue by downloading the application again at the gate prior to take-off and, as a back-up, are able to rely on paper charts they can obtain at the airport. We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers.
American Airlines pilots use an app called FliteDeck, which is made by the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen.
According to the BBC, the company’s cockpits went “paperless” in 2013 to save its staff having to lug heavy paperwork on board. American Airlines estimated the shift would save more than $1.2 million in fuel every year.