The Surprisingly Simple iPad Apps Pilots Use to Make Your Flight Better

No Words With Friends here, it's all about fuel calculations, safety notices, and maps.
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British Airways

As you queue anxiously on the jet bridge, you pull out your tablet to see how much battery you've got left. Then you check your kids' tablets—this is a long flight, and those game- and movie-filled screens will be a welcome, necessary distraction at 35,000 feet. And if you look carefully as you step onto the plane, you might catch your pilots doing the same thing.

Don't freak—even with autopilot's help, human aviators aren't allowed to kick back for a Lord of the Rings marathon or accept your Words With Friends challenge. Just like you need your tablet to get you through the flight with your sanity intact, the pilots need their tablets to get you wherever you're going.

iPads and other tablets first entered the cockpit about a decade ago, replacing the reams of printouts and books that pilots had to carry in their flight bags, an easy way to save about 100 pounds of weight in an industry where fuel efficiency is incredibly important. But an off-the-shelf tablet is powerful enough to augment a plane's built-in computer, and airlines keep finding new ways to use that handy power. Pilots can swipe and tap to stay up to date on safety notices, meet the rest of their crew, order fuel, and plot the fastest, most efficient routes.

Essential Information
Pilots launch a British Airways portal, to give them quick and easy access to the apps they need before take-off and during flight.British Airways

At British Airways, which started equipping its pilots with iPads five years ago, the tablets are a tool for streamlining the many tasks that compete for attention before takeoff. Passengers and baggage need loading, fuel needs pumping, flight plans need agreeing. When a pilot unlocks his iPad, it looks much like yours, albeit with a big, dark, British Airways logo as the background. But then the pilot opens a portal and gets a simplified view of the apps they'll need, as large blue buttons in neatly arranged rows. There's Go Fly, for inflight information; Yammer, for chatting with other people in the company; ESP-PIL, for letting the pilot pull up information on every passenger aboard, to see what status they are, and whether they’ve been delayed recently. If another holdup is imminent, the pilot can walk back through the plane and give that high-value, potentially aggrieved traveler some special attention.

If they didn't have time to meet everybody in person before the flight, pilots can pull up a photo for each crew member. An Airbus A380 carries 22 crew members, so these profiles help with security and teamwork. “When you’re opening the flight deck door, you've got a good idea who you’re operating with, for example,” says BA pilot Spencer Norton.

Before heading to the plane, pilots use the iPads to check for operational alerts: a strike in Europe closing an airport, or a memo about deicing in winter conditions. Before going electronic, BA's dispatchers hung these notices from clips at the top of the escalator into the crew room at London’s Heathrow Airport. A pilot would report for duty not knowing how many notices there were to read and absorb, so they would always have to allow plenty of time. Even that didn’t guarantee every pilot saw every notice, particularly if someone was borrowing a long one that they wanted extra time to absorb. “If it’s a four-page notice, the guy before you would take it to photocopy it, then you arrive at the clip and you don’t see it,” Norton says.

Now, in the electronic portal, a pilot clicks on Notices and gets a list color coded red, amber, or green in order of importance. They check each off as they read them, creating a paper trail—without paper.

Fill Her Up
Using a tablet to order fuel allows pilots to calculate exactly how much they'll need for a specific route, in particular weather conditions.British Airways

Next, it's onto one of an airline’s biggest expenses: fuel. In the past, British Airways pilots would make their best estimate of how much fuel they needed for the trip, for contingency, for diversions, and in reserve, and relay their order to a dispatcher. The airport fueler would arrive with their truck and get to pumping, usually with a little extra to account for the fuel sloshing around during fueling and not giving accurate readings on the gauges. They would then disconnect the hose, climb the stairs to the jet way, and walk through first class to hand the pilots a piece of paper for sign off. “You know he’s there, you can smell the fuel,” says BA pilot Dave Thomas.

Since December, British Airways pilots have used their iPads to calculate exactly how much fuel to request, send it to the fueler's own tablet, and sign for it. If they want an extra 20-minute buffer on the way from London to LA because there are reports of storms, they just have to move a little slider. The tablet automatically adds 28 minutes' worth of fuel to the request, since that extra fuel means more weight, reducing the plane's efficiency. For the guy or gal working the pump, they have some extra time to fill the tanks more slowly—and avoid the sloshing that makes for inaccurate readings—and then don't have to stink up first class.

The Route Ahead
Using a tablet, a pilot can pull up detailed maps, and zoom in on the destination airport, or one that they have to divert to.British Airways

Once they're in the air, pilots can dig deeper into the portal, pull up flight plans, and check out either their route or, if there's an in-flight emergency, an alternative where they can land quickly. It’s not quite like pulling up Google Maps and saying "Go straight 800 miles, then turn left at Nevada." Pilots' charts contain data like waypoint coordinates, and nearest divert airports, so they knew where to go if an emergency strikes. As they get closer to their destination, the tablet offers approach paths, and airport layout maps with taxi paths to stands and gates.

Right now, BA’s maps are pdfs, so a pilot can write on them, to cross out a closed taxiway for example, but they don’t update in real time. In the future, they could be made much more dynamic. BA is experimenting with an Aircraft Interface Device, or AID, which is a one-way connection to the plane’s flight management computer. The aircraft would communicate its exact position to the iPad, which could then give an experience much more like the real-time navigation you’re used to in your car. The single-direction gateway helps keep the plane’s systems secure.

Modern airliners are incredibly complicated, but even on the most electronically controlled planes, the built-in computers are relatively basic, and slow to change. That’s deliberate, because they’re extremely robust, with proven safety records and certifications. A tablet can be much more powerful, and flexible. “I can’t fly the plane through Angry Birds on my iPad, but the plane can talk to the iPad, give it speed, altitude, and temperatures, and then you can start doing some really whizzy things,” says Thomas.

Those whizzy things could someday include weather info that updates in real time. Today, pilots pick up weather maps produced around 4am, and then rely on them for the entire duration of a day long, long-distance international flight, or several short-haul hops. Combined with in-flight WiFi, which many airlines are introducing, a dispatcher on the ground could send real-time weather information to a tablet, and allow a pilot to avoid a pocket of turbulence, or to plot the most efficient route. “If we can deliver this information to the iPad closer to departure, then we might get customers there quicker, save some fuel,” Thomas says.

So while you're enjoying Netflix on your tablet in the back, you can be grateful for the pilot's, upfront.


Cleared for Takeoff