Apple iPad Flight Planning for Jet Blue

This week JetBlue announced that they are training their pilot to switch to Apple’s iPad apps for essential flight planning access.

The iPad app is fast becoming popular in the aviation industry as airlines make the move to a paperless cockpit, offering flight decks greater flexibility with flight planning tasks, replacing laptops and bulky flight bags full of paper manuals, charts and associated flight planning paperwork.

American Airlines announced just days before that it has completed its plan for the introduction of more than 8,000 iPads fleet-wide. This all adds up to less weight, less fuel burned and huge improvements in the efficiency of the flight planning process all round.

ARINC Flight Planning services, which now includes the iPad app, fully realised the potential implications of improving flight planning and flight deck operations and began implementing the app after FAA approval in 2011.

JetBlue hope that, in addition to the electronic flight bag, the FAA will further approve apps for instrument approach and taxiway charts in the near future.  There is little doubt that, certainly for flight planning, the iPad is the way forward for the aviation industry.