iPad Problems Caused Planes to Be Grounded

A problem with the software downed the planes safely.

Several American Airlines planes were downed late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning due to glitches in the plane’s cockpit. Many planes use iPads instead of traditional tracking devices to map their routes from airport to airport. Late on Tuesday, the iPads started having a problem where the maps were jumping around.

“Some flights are experiencing an issue with a software application on pilot iPads,” American Airlines said in a statement to CNN Money. “In some cases, the flight has had to return to the gate to access a WiFi connection to fix the issue.”

Airline spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said “more than a couple dozen flights” were affected. They are not releasing, however, how many passengers or where those specific planes were headed.

“We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers,” American Airlines said. “We are working to have them on the way to their destination as soon as possible.”

While they aren’t releasing what caused the glitch on the iPads, the airline is confirming that the problem is not due to the iPad itself or the software, but rather the app that they use to track the flight. 

This comes just a few weeks after the latest plane crash, one that has had many people calling for a scale-down of the technology that is in our planes. Many are claiming that we are pushing too far and that pilots have too much technology to focus on instead of actually flying the plane. 

American Airlines added iPads to their planes in 2011, using them to completely track navigation and flight plans. One reason for the change was that they wanted to use less paper and focus on becoming more environmentally friendly.

So far, the program has saved 400,000 gallons of fuel every single year. As for the paper, 8,000 iPads replaced some 24 million pages of documents.