JetBlue Adds iPads to the Flight Deck Too…Takes It One Step Further than Other Major Carriers…Perhaps a Little Scary

Like American Airlines and several other major carriers, JetBlue announced yesterday that they too are now providing pilots with iPads to cut down on paperwork and manuals in the cockpit. As TNW reports:

The New York-based budget airline has been given approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which will see its pilots receive custom-equipped iPads that serve up real-time information related to the flight. Each JetBlue pilot will be trained to use three apps that are pivotal to their job – real-time weather, pre-flight planning and digital airport and aircraft charts – and the iPads will replace laptops and a “mound of paper manuals and charts”.JetBlue has previously embarked on a trial phase with around 60 pilots over a number of months, and is now in the process of dishing out a fourth-generation 16GB WiFi iPad to all 2,500 pilots. 

JetBlue though has plans for the pilots to use the standard on-board wifi for certain apps…hopefully the connection is better than most I’ve experienced. 9To5Mac adds:

JetBlue is, however, taking things a step further than American. As the airline is introducing on-board wifi, it plans to allow pilots to connect their iPads to it to receive updated weather reports and company documents during the flight. With all the glass-panel instruments on board a modern airliner, there’s something faintly bizarre about the idea of weather updates arriving on an iPad. United is planning the same thing, though with a separate crew-only wifi network to ensure the pilots don’t have to compete with passengers for bandwidth. United is also installing wifi at each jetway for use by flight crew.