{"id":15069,"date":"2015-05-28T19:16:33","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T19:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kasperskydaily.com\/b2b\/?p=4005"},"modified":"2019-11-15T07:04:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T12:04:17","slug":"a-plane-out-of-schedule-and-a-butterfly-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/a-plane-out-of-schedule-and-a-butterfly-effect\/15069\/","title":{"rendered":"A plane out of schedule and a butterfly effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

A weird story took place in late April. A \u201cfew dozen\u201d of American Airlines flights experienced significant delays due to an unexpected reason<\/a>:\u00a0a glitch in an iPad app. Nothing extremely critical happened \u2013 no lives were\u00a0endangered. A number of pilots simply failed to receive their flight plans due to a software error and refused to take off without them.<\/p>\n

The app in question is FliteDeck<\/a> made by the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen. It is an \u201celectronic flight bag\u201d, which replaced heavy physical charts and paper manuals which pilots are required to carry with them by the current regulation. Altogether, these bags can weigh up to 40lbs\/18kg \u2013 and carrying such heavy-load bags around wasn\u2019t exactly a pleasure for the pilots.<\/p>\n

A plane out of schedule and a butterfly effect #security<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n

An electronic flight bag allowed for a\u00a0reduction in flight preparation time, and reduced the likelihood of injuries. It also helps the staff by offering real-time updates. No surprise that air crews loved the small and handy replacements. American Airlines also states that eliminating \u201c24 million pages of paper documents\u201d allowed them to save \u201ca minimum 400,000 gallons and $1.2 million of fuel annually\u201d.<\/p>\n

The FAA approved using the tablets as a substitute to physical flight bags, and American Airlines was the first carrier to get such an approval.<\/p>\n

On April 28, 2015 FliteDeck started crashing devices after a new electronic map (somehow conflicting with an older version) had been distributed to the tablets. It looked like a possible\u00a0epidemic, and pilots opted not to depart until the situation had been sorted. This happened relatively quickly and easily \u2013 pilots only had to reinstall the problematic app, but the delay proved to be quite significant.<\/p>\n

According to American Airlines spokesperson Casey Norton<\/a>, in some cases, pilots were able to resolve the issue during the boarding process. Other pilots were forced to return the plane to the gate \u2013 just to access Wi-Fi connection and fix the issue.<\/p>\n

According to some social media reports<\/a>, some pilots got the situation resolved by printing out the charts and manuals \u2013 on paper, the old way.<\/p>\n

Summing up, we can say that a butterfly effect of sorts has been observed. A small, but serious code error, a glitch that powers down the iPads, pilots get confused, flights get grounded \u2013 and who knows what other \u201ccollateral damage\u201d might have happened. A string of petty accidents leading to a sensitive continuity interruption, which affected not only American Airlines but Apple and Jeppesen too.<\/p>\n

In a sense this story also is a showcase of \u201ctechnology dependence\u201d on the brink of addiction that is a common issue these days. Pilots are required by regulation to keep their flightplans and charts at their side. A tablet is a convenient way to store and use them, and it is quick to become a habit.<\/p>\n

Could the pilots take off without their iPads? Probably so, given that they have a paper copy of their flight plans (actually, as shown above, that\u2019s exactly what happened in some cases).<\/p>\n

Our dependency on technology is something that we have already gotten used to \u2013 and neo-luddites aren\u2019t quite welcome in our world today. Still, when it comes to addiction \u2013 and definitely technology addiction is no joke as a lot of articles, papers, and books on the topic are out there \u2013 the question of staying secure comes forward.<\/p>\n

Tech addiction and dependence occurs\u00a0quietly. In fact, 30 years ago (so much and so little!) there weren\u2019t any cellulars around \u2013 now it seems as if everyone has at least one mobile handset. Living without one doesn\u2019t seem to be\u00a0a viable option. As is the case with the internet, which exists in its current form for just 20 years now. Smartphones and tablets are around for less than 10 years \u2013 iPad, for instance, hit its 5-year \u201cjubilee\u201d last month.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already gotten used to them and \u00a0we can\u2019t go about without them, or at least wouldn\u2019t want to. This increasing dependence seems unbeatable now, and fighting it appears futile.\u00a0What should be fought\u00a0is the security risks that the slow avalanche of new tech drags along.<\/p>\n

In a sense, the situation with a crashing iPad app \u201cgrounding\u201d more than a few airplanes, can be applicable in every company\u2019s IT infrastructure: a petty component that nobody really cares about until it fails. Then this bottleneck \u201csuddenly\u201d becomes the most important thing around.<\/p>\n

A familiar security nightmare: a petty component none cares of announces itself #protectmybiz<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n

Think of a router, for instance: once set up, it\u2019s all but forgotten \u2013 until there\u2019s something wrong with traffic getting redirected to where it shouldn\u2019t. And even then it would be low on the IT staff\u2019s \u201csuspects list\u201d.<\/p>\n

Technology dependence cannot be beaten, \u00a0but the technologies can be laid out properly. With good system architecture and a proper security policy, the number of bottlenecks like this is brought to an absolute minimum.<\/p>\n

And the planes fly on schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Technology dependence cannot be beaten, but the technologies can be laid out properly. With good system architecture and a proper security policy, the number of bottlenecks is brought to an absolute minimum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":15587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1999,3052],"tags":[181,2302,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-15069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"category-smb","9":"tag-mobile-apps","10":"tag-protectmybiz","11":"tag-security-2"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/a-plane-out-of-schedule-and-a-butterfly-effect\/15069\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/a-plane-out-of-schedule-and-a-butterfly-effect\/15069\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/a-plane-out-of-schedule-and-a-butterfly-effect\/15069\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/mobile-apps\/","name":"mobile apps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15069"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30479,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15069\/revisions\/30479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}