Now an intelligent design
Would have used pads from two different makers, different OSs, and with the software written by two independent companies. Otherwise they're a single point of failure, as demonstrated.
Dozens of American Airlines flights were delayed this morning when pilots' iPads abruptly crashed, leaving the entire AA fleet without access to vital flight plans and, resultantly, grounded. American Airlines uses specific software on its pilots' iPads to distribute flight plans and relevant information to the crew. The …
"Would have used pads from two different makers, different OSs, and with the software written by two independent companies. Otherwise they're a single point of failure, as demonstrated."
Hmm, that would more than double the cost of getting the software written and of maintaining the two systems, and you'd still have got half your flights grounded today. Unless you're suggesting that every pilot should have permanent acces to two tablets, rather than deploying a mix, in which case even more cost. Hard to justify for a non-safety-critical system. Maybe better to have a web-based fall-back, so in a pinch pilots could use their own smartphones or tablets to sign in and grab the data?
They may not be "safety critical" but they sure are business-critical as shown today.
Also I doubt the cost of having software for two OS is anywhere near double to cost of one, but we will have to wait and see if it was an OS problem killing the connections or an app problem. Either way, it is a timely reminder of just how much companies depend on IT systems working.
The person I replied to said specifically "[...] software written by two independent companies", so if it's bespoke software, you'd pay twice for that; bespoke software is typically more a development cost than anything else. Granted, if it's off-the-shelf, then that might not be the case.
Nonsense. All the work before commissioning a vendor to write the software is portable to the second vendor.
Also, the first is likely to have asked most the questions you didn't think about, making it easier for the second.
If you have two suppliers work simultaneously you may get questions from both that make both products better.
As for the comment above about buying twice as much hardware, the article mentions the pilot and copilot's iPads both going blank. So you already have two devices, this is just about enduring there's redundancy beyond the physical device.
The software is already written: Delta Airlines gives its pilots Surface tablets running the same software from Jeppesen. Airlines would one hardware supplier because they can get better discounts by buying 10,000+ tablets from one maker than by splitting it into 4000 and 7000...
Replacing the bulky 35lbs flight bags also allowed airlines to save fuel.
I don't see how 35lbs results in a significant fuel savings. Rather, I think a smart pilot would want to keep the 35lbs paper flight manuals on-board anyway as a backup. As a passenger, that's O.K by me.
>>I don't see how 35lbs results in a significant fuel savings. Rather, I think a smart pilot would want to keep the 35lbs paper flight manuals on-board anyway as a backup. As a passenger, that's O.K by me.
You don't see it because you're looking at the problem the wrong way. You're looking at 35 lbs. as a fraction of the plane's total weight, in which case it's a small fraction of 1%, which seems fairly insignificant.
Instead, imagine how much energy it must take to lift a 35 lb dumbbell several miles into the air and then move it hundreds of miles per hour to a destination that's hundreds of miles away. That's a non-trivial amount of energy/fuel. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of flights per day and you're quickly talking about a huge amount of fuel and money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/business/11air.html
Consider that reducing drink tray weight by 17 lbs. is saving American 1.9M gallons of fuel annually. So cutting the flight paperwork by 34 lbs. is probably saving hundreds of thousands of gallons.
Hmm, that would more than double the cost of getting the software written and of maintaining the two systems
The cost of a single outage is in the millions. I doubt that the cost of maintaining different makes and versions for the Captain and co-pilot is anywhere near that.
Would have used pads from two different makers, different OSs, and with the software written by two independent companies. Otherwise they're a single point of failure, as demonstrated.
Smart. As I recall, the U.S. Space Shuttle has/had three independent & redundant onboard computers with three different hardware configurations and software written with three different compiler manufacturers.
No, he's suggesting that, instead of Pilot + Co pilot having 1x Tablet-X each, the Pilot has 1x tablet-X and Co pilot has 1x Tablet-Y running the same software but on different platforms for system resilience.
Yes there's an initial cost of porting your app to a different platform but given the business impact of not getting your birds in the air at all for want of a second device type is huge.
In that case scenario all the flights would have taken off as each of the 737s would have at least one functioning flight plan tablet.
Proper resilience and business continuity is only expensive until you don't have it.
"Replacing the bulky 35lbs flight bags also allowed airlines to save fuel."
That made me laugh. What's that, 16kg? I can't see that saving a lot of fuel on a 747... or many other planes.
Besides which any savings were more than wiped out by today's problems.
Seems they'd have been better off sticking with the "old" solution which worked.
Seems they'd have been better off sticking with the "old" solution which worked
Problem with the old solution is cross referencing every minor update and error addendum every time you looked at the book, that and making sure 50000 pilots placed worldwide got the bit of paper with the "don't push the red button mid flight" update.
if Boeing issued an addendum for all aircraft that's a few million flight crew that needed be aware of it.
Since most of these birds have glass cockpits is there a reason why the data couldn't be uploaded directly to the planes? Perhaps something complicated like a USB stick would work.
In order to include additionnal functionalities to a glass cockpit, you have to ensure that this software won't have an adverse effect on the overall system.
This mean developping the software following the good ol' DO178b (or the c if you're up to date), and would probably increase the costs of the developpement by a 4-5 factor, if not more...
From what I recall, the pilot and co-pilot are not allowed to eat the same food as each other, just in case one set of foods a bit off and makes one of them ill, the other pilot who ate different food won't be ill.
So there is history in the airline industry having systems in place in case something happens to one pilot, this should have been thought of the tablets, what happens if both tablets goes down at the same time, what's the worst case scenario, how can we prevent that.
No, NO ONE should be using iPad, Surface Pro, Kindle Fire or Domestic Android tablet for this application.
OS too fragile
HW too fragile.
At the very worse something like a Panasonic ToughPad, with Linux rather than consumer Android or "Windows" and locked down to prevent users adding applications.
Edit:
While QNX was great on embedded systems and disk controllers, I'd not use a Blackberry either.
This happened on take-off and that's a great time to fail. If this happened mid-flight, it's kinda fucking terrifying if you don't have access to an airport chart for the destination.
Let's say there's a comms problem driving the failure, radios and landing instrument tracking - without a paper backup how do you know the runway elevation and length? How about the frequency of the local tower? Loads of good reasons to have this (redundantly) on paper.
"should have used the Surface Pro like most other airlines that use tablets.."
Got a source for that?
When Delta announced they were going with Surface rather than iPad, it was so unusual that there was a joint MS/Delta press release [1], and a flurry of articles e.g. [2] saying that the drivers didn't want Surface, they wanted what they were used to, ie iPads.
Shades of MS desperation and a CEO-level deal, methinks.
[1] http://news.microsoft.com/2013/09/30/delta-to-equip-11000-pilots-with-microsoft-surface-2-electronic-flight-bags/
"Delta to equip 11,000 pilots with Microsoft Surface 2 electronic flight bags
Posted September 30, 2013 By barrettevans
ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 30, 2013 — Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) is equipping its 11,000 pilots with electronic flight bags using the Microsoft Surface 2 tablet. Device rollout to pilots flying the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 fleets will start later this year and all Delta cockpits are projected to be paperless by the end of 2014.
(continues)"
[2] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/30/delta-pilots-fought-against-deal-to-replace-ipad-flight-bags-with-microsoft-surface
"Got a source for that?"
Pretty much every single airline that went for tablets since the FAA certified Windows based solutions last year seems to have gone for a Windows based option:
http://www.lovemysurface.net/surface-pro-3-airlines-equip-their-pilots/
South West Airlines, Lufthansa, Austria for example. Also Air Asia and Delta pilots also use Surface tablets. British Airways City Flyer also went Windows and supplied their pilots with the Panasonic Toughpad
'Latest' versions have bugs; it's not until they've had a damn good kicking in service that they can be deemed stable. If I thought the people flying my plane were using a version that wasn't stable, I wouldn't even get on board.
Nope, the right answer is platform redundancy, as others have noted.
The only realistic subsidiary to Jeppeson is a Lufthansa subsidiary and as far as I'm aware neither support Android or Windows. You're stuck with the iPads. And remember this stuff has to integrate with the airlines back-end flight planning software, so pointless duplication would be a major fundamental cost
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action".
...So... what is it when the entire fleet experiences the same event?
But really: is it any surprise when Apple's patented Magical Thinking™ security does not work?
Disclaimer: I am assuming that American Airlines have more than 3 airplanes. It seems a fair assumption, but I have no data to back it up.
From other reports, the issue appears to have been a problem with the application (not the hardware or OS) hence multiple affected aircraft.
One thing I am unclear on is the need to return to the terminal for Wifi access - I would hazard a guess that they had backup hardware but needed to re-sync the information but that is speculation rather than inside knowledge.
Hopefully there will be a public report for what went wrong.
This could have been prevented with 80's era tech - a 286 hooked up to a dot matrix printer* and a fax to send out flight plans as required. As in, "put down the shiny toy and look at this white stuff with printing on it. It's called paper. It doesn't require batteries or wifi. It just works™."
* See BOFH 2013, #5. As an added bonus, when they work out who is responsible for this stuff up, they too can be fed to the dot matrix printer.
Could it have been a passenger running a mobile hotspot with No iOS Zone? The symptoms are eerily similar.
Could it have been a passenger running a mobile hotspot with No iOS Zone?
“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,”
That's one hell of a No iOS Zone created if it affected planes all over the US, or there's some magical synchronicity happening between people running that software.
Knowing American Airlines, as I did slightly many years ago, they could well be doing that.
About 11-12 years ago, my work took me to Dallas TX, and my customer had a deal with American Airlines so I had to fly with them. Their in-flght corporate videos - eg "Welcome to American Airlines", "Finding your way around Dallas Airport", etc - commenced with an animated rotating Earth.
But the Earth was rotating in the wrong direction...
But shouldn't the Earth rotate in the opposite direction in the video because you're facing the screen, not looking at the ground, and you're flying in a different direction to how you arrived and because of the timezone differences, the plane, clouds and sunspots and stuff?
- AA Marketing and Media Team.