iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals

Potentially good idea..

..to have a searchable, electronic copy of all those manuals. I guess the Kindle vs. iPad argument depends on whether or not colour and/or graphics are involved.

Good idea

I'm about to buy an iPad, ostensibly to use as a portable e-reader for HP service manuals. This will be a massive step up from the Windoze Mobile PDA that work expect me to use at the moment.

battery life, "electronic flight bag"

If folks had bothered to read the original article rather than the cut-down content-free El Reg version, it says "second battery for over 20 hours between recharges".

There may well be other good reasons why this is a bad idea (or there may not, see below), but battery life appears to have been considered already and a suitable workaround provided.

If you want to know what's really happening on this subject, and it really isn't what little you've read in this article, go read about the "electronic flight bag". It's here already (been here for ten years or more, actually), and it isn't (yet) iPad based, though some are already based on commercial laptops.

Have a safe trip.

Btw, what's the latest on the Qantas/Trent QF32 hiccup?

And of course

You could still simply have the paper back-up on board, just in case the tablet crashes. Looking a page up in a thick manual is generally slower than looking it up in a pdf on a half-decent computer.

the world we live in...

browsing a paper menu at a restaurant (ok pub), wife comments that main X sounds nice... I can't spot it... it's on page 2, half way down... still can't see it; "damn it, where's control F on this thing"

No mobiles on planes

Is the only decent bit about air travel.

Ipad not an e-reader

Yuck, so now pilots have to be staring an LCDs? If you're going to replace paper, replace it with something at least as good.

And are they going to have to wait while the Ipad needs charging after every trip? What happens when it runs out of battery?

E-readers (which the Ipad is *not*) with e-ink technology would be the candidate to look at. Even there though, replacing paper in these situations is dubious. I don't think replacing paper makes sense until we get a technological equivalent to paper - e.g., the "electronic paper" that is being developed.

The sad thing is that even when we have electronic paper, that looks just like paper, can be rolled up, doesn't need power to update, can display colour and video - Apple will release an expensive tablet based on outdated LCD technology with an Apple logo, and still win all the hype, because "Ooh I can't play games on the electronic paper model and it isn't as reflective!"

"I guess the Kindle vs. iPad argument depends on whether or not colour and/or graphics are involved."

There should be no more a Kindle vs. Ipad argument than say, Kindle vs. Netbook, or Kindle vs. any other non-e-reader device.

The actual argument should be between Kindle vs. Sony E-reader; or E-reader vs. Paper.

F111F: If it's about the maps, Nokia have been providing offline mapping software (i.e., no network connection needed) to ordinary people since before we even started getting rumours about Apple's vaporware tablet. I don't see why it's news that Apple can now do it years later.

EFB, iPad, and cell phones

1) Regarding why airlines would bother trying to use an iPad instead of a COTS EFB, one reason is cost. As much as an iPad + certified software costs, many EFBs cost more still. As soon as you put "Made for aviation" on a product, the cost skyrockets.

2) For me, the main problem with the iPad as an EFB or chart replacement is that I can't take out the one or two charts I need, but instead have to deal with the full bulk of the device. It might not seem like much, but when you're in a tin can travelling 100mph or more over the ground in sometimes less than ideal situations, little things like this sometimes matter.

3) As for the cell phone/electronic interference, yes, it sometimes /can/ cause interference. It sometimes takes very specific situations for it to matter, which makes it difficult to test in a lab environment. But I have personally experienced a situation where a cell phone could indeed have been the cause of the interference: ATC was unable to read my transponder code, and it was the one time I forgot to turn my cell phone off. Yes, it is only circumstantial evidence, but at least one other pilot I know of had a similar instance happen to him.

Phones vs avionics - myth?

In the mid 90s I was doing some contract work for an medium sized airline and asked my client about the mobile phone issue.

His remit included the in-flight phone system so I joked that it was just to make passengers use the airline's $8 per minute phones. He informed me that it cost the airline $10 per minute and the service was a loss leader.

He also told me that Airbus had carried out many tests and had not managed to find find conclusive evidence that phones had any effect on the avionics. Some of the tests were quite extreme including placing a French army mobile radar unit on a scaffold right next to the fuselage. It had no adverse effect al all.

His off the record conclusion was that problems with avionics were likely to be software issues rather than external forces. I assume he was being honest with me.

"made for aviation"

"As soon as you put "Made for aviation" on a product, the cost skyrockets."

Perhaps that's in part because designing and certifying stuff for low volume aviation use involves rather more time and effort than the equivalent high volume consumer electronics product, where the consumer usually does the beta testing having paid for the product?

Which approach would you prefer next time you fly?