Over the last couple of years, one of the industries which has really been transformed by the iPad is the aviation industry, where pilots have all of a sudden been able to trade-in their bulky flight bags stuffed with fifty pounds worth of flight manuals and materials for light, thin iPads.
We’ve written a lot of stories about pilots getting iPads (here’s another one!), but we’ve never actually gotten a good look at the iPad set-up pilots are using instead. Consider that remedied.
This video is part of a recent segment from Gadling’s Cockpit Chronicles series, and it features an American Airlines pilot demonstrating his new iPad set-up in the cockpit.
Essentially, each iPad is mounted in the cockpit, with the battery life extended through the use of a Hypermac Battery that can extend the iPad’s battery life by 24 hours. The set-up is then tested in a hypobaric chamber to simulate how the iPad will react to rapid decompression.
Some of American Airlines’ planes have, with this setup, pretty much completely phased out in-flight manuals except for a small booklet on what to do in emergency situations. Not bad, but far from universal: the FAA must test and approve the iPad individually in every type of plane before it can be rolled out to those jets in the fleet.
Source: Gadling
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
3 responses to “Check Out What It’s Like To Pilot A Jet With An iPad In The Cockpit [Video]”
That pilot is me. I love my toys.
What is the fallback for iPad device failure – look out the window? :-)
But iPads are supposed to be nothing but toys for young children. Only Windows 8 tablets are useful for work and business and helping to fly aircraft. Suppose the pilot needs to multi-task? He can’t do that with an iPad. There’s no way he can use Microsoft Office mid-flight to stop the plane from crashing. The iPad is only useful for playing Angry Birds or watching some movie or at least that’s what all the brilliant people in the computer industry are saying. No Windows, no worky.
/s