Heavily rely on technology? ipad glitch grounds commercial airplane, delays 54 flights in 2 days. Rethink paper vs digital?

*update* Aug 16, 2015
7News - The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems which caused some flights to be delayed & grounded at east coast airports. Computer issues at an air traffic control center caused serious delays along the east coast, grounding and delaying flights, including some at Logan Airport. The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems. The issue has since been fixed, but flights are still catching up from the delays. Andrew Robinson was supposed to have a layover in Baltimore before heading home to Chicago, only to find the flight canceled after being delayed multiple times.

"We stood in line for about three hours, tried to get a connecting flight and ended up finagling something to Milwaukee in the morning," said Robinson. Other travelers told 7News they were planning on booking hotels and flying out Sunday. Lisa Grant, whose flight to Baltimore was canceled, said she was giving up on flying this weekend. "I'm not one that likes to fly. So knowing that there were problems, we should have drove and that's what we're going to go, drive back home."

A day after flights were canceled or delayed at BWI due to a computer glitch, things are back to normal. Flights are operating normally at BWI-Marshall but passenger volume is very heavy in the wake of yesterday's FAA computer issues. — BWI Marshall Airport (@BWI_Airport) August 16, 2015 Officials say that passenger volume is very heavy, however, as ...

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An APP glitch on pilot’s iPads has seen more than 50 American Airlines flights delayed in the past two days due to a failure in navigation-map software. A spokeswoman for the airline, Andrea Huguely, said that pilots were deleting and reinstalling the map app to fix the problem.

Huguely said that 24 flights were delayed Tuesday night and about 30 on Wednesday. She said no flights were cancelled. However, some passengers said on social media that they left planes after pilots announced delays.

Several American Airlines flights were delayed today after glitches were reported in a third-party software application before takeoff, according to the airline.
"In some cases, the flight has had to return to the gate to access a WiFi connection to fix the issue," an American Airlines spokeswoman said in a statement to ABC News. "We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers. We are working to have them on the way to their destination as soon as possible."

Pilots rely on a third-party application on their iPads to access flight plans and maps, according to the airline.

The issue persisted for a few hours until American implemented a workaround for the few flights that had been impacted. The airline said only some of the iPads with the software were affected and that it was not a widespread issue.

In 2011, American Airlines became the first commercial carrier to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to transition from paper flight plans to an iPad-based solution. The tablets were widely implemented in 2013.

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Photo courtesy American Airlines, Wilfredo Lee/AP and AFP