The issue is that even a slight overlap with other cockpit functions puts you in a much stricter regime, and thus a simple modern map rendering framework doesn’t work, because its components and dependencies have never been sufficiently dissected - you rather have a 5 second lag, terrible as it sounds from a pragmatic safety perspective, than having anything, especially your own position, misplaced only once in a billion map redraws.
The practical solution is that most airlines by now fly with iPads, Jeppesen Flight Deck Pro but even GA stuff like ForeFlight, which is also owned by Boeing, is popular for quick lookups like taxi instructions etc.
Wow. I remember spending 3 weeks in Alameda CA to get trained and certified on VxWorks for a project...in 1999!
BTW, are you a pilot or in the airline industry?
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C is a good starting point to understand certification requirements
OT: People's faith in Wikipedia seems to be increasing on HN, which is odd for a sophisticated audience in the era of misinformation.
Rules for my own small GA plane flights if it’s in one without glass cockpit are: two fully charged devices with latest data on both (iPad and phone), flight plan on both (ForeFlight syncs automatically), plus two means of charging (larger Anker pack, and dashboard USB or 12V outlet).
I could see tablets as being far more efficient and thus effective in a crisis - no searching through thousands of pages, no juggling large volumes, just hold a tablet and search or click a bookmark. I'm just trying to get the full picture.
The iPad is actually mounted on the yoke right in front of you, some people mount it to the side with suction cups against the window, and starting to fiddle with the backup phone is already a distraction if the main hands free one goes down. Issues friends had were heat shutdowns in summer, plus one already cracked screen where the backlight then suddenly failed.
You rarely use the iPad in critical flight stages anyway, it’s more a navigation aid and displaying other traffic, and good practice to (see battery point above) keep the screen switched off for longer to stay proficient in the traditional approaches anyway.
The arguably number one case were an iPad with the fast updating screen is helpful in a crisis is an engine failure or similar emergency where you need to find a place to land fast, and as it knows the airplane you’re flying in, terrain underneath, winds etc it literally draws and uneven (different terrain) circle around your current position and shows you what is probably realistic. Another one is as potential fallback if one of the actual instruments fails, once had a stuck compass for example.
The answer to that is: "almost certainly a very tiny one". Aviation computing, while externally quite boring, is exciting in the sense that tremendous effort is put into making a computing system that ensures a flight makes it from its source to its destination without killing people.
It's amazing how just a few accidents in the 50s, 60s, and 70s led to an unbelievable improvement in safety, consider that the IT systems are really constrained. Makes you wonder what you could do with a modern PC if you really tried.
There are only 480 submarines in the world, and the 400 episodes exclude General Aviation accidents (non-planned routes) so there are definitely more planes than submarines which dived into water…
Hence A320 still running on Motorola 68000 of Sega Genesis etc fame.
And 737max having a top panel from the 60s.
You could even insert ads into the recordings to reach the people who listen to the recordings after an accident!
The reason is simple - they need stability of parts supply with minimal recertification costs, and in this case it means that by having an already certified cpu (AMD 29k) and full manufacturing line capability for it, they don't have to face issues with vendor deciding to scrap a line (like another popular design, i860, had to deal with) or having to constantly recertify and update for newer parts.
And quite often the computing requirements didn't really grow
Using Chrome/JS/CSS on the latest Ryzen might be neat but when you need to transport 300 passengers daily around there is other sort of concerns then taking up 3 folks to the ISS every 6 months.
And the map isn't even part of the primary navigation method, plus with multi pilot crew usually you can offload slower, less time critical tasks to copilot.
This is an airplane after all, not a consumer-grade gadget.
The speed of this thing doesn't seem particularly vital either. Everything of interest in a split second scenario is already on-screen; just looking at their speed, it would you a comparatively long time to get off the edge of the map. If you have time to get off the edge of the map, you have time to wait a couple seconds for the page to load. If you don't have time to get off the edge of the map, there's not really a reason to fidget with it.
I agree, it seems annoying, but it doesn't ultimately seem dangerous. I can't think of a situation where you a) need to change the screen, and b) don't have time to wait for the UI to update. And I would much rather have 2 seconds of UI lag to get a known correct response than milli/nano seconds of lag to get a probably correct response. Most of us exist in a world where the response time is more important than absolute correctness.
have a look at the last manned mission they did. Glorious touch screen displays with all the bells and whistles.
I imagine SpaceX has a different set of certification requirements (ie Airbus has stronger financial incentives to use existing, approved designs for components).
Like, I get the argument for certification but maybe the requirements should have a minimum level of performance. If that's not possible maybe we should find a different equilibrium.
The electronic flight bag interface is not used in emergencies, one of its main uses is in planning and submitting flight plans before takeoff, and it's generally not used for actively flying the plane.
Try tapping on Belfast Muni airport (KBST in ICAO) in Maine in ForeFlight, and the dataset consolidation will pull Bost airbase (BST in IATA) in Afghanistan. While it’s fairly obvious that you’re not going to Central Asia in your Piper, imagine pulling the 3x longer runway into your FMS and have it compute landing settings or add it as emergency alternate for your A350 into Boston.
It’s still completely different levels of reliability.
That said... in practice it's a FAR better experience than crappy built-in avionics.
You would actually expect it to be several levels below, but extremely well tested, just like spacecraft hardware/software.