Three of the major players in the tablet navigation business say the new iPad products are fully compatible and are noticeably faster at getting information to the pilot. “ForeFlight Mobile version 5.4.4 (already available for download from the App Store) is fully compatible with the iPad Air,” said ForeFlight CEO Tyson Weihs. “The air screams — the best evidence of this is the speed with which ADS-B in-flight weather from Stratus loads on the Airs.” Hilton Goldstein, of Hilton Software, was similarly enthusiastic about the iPad Air for WingX. “WingX Pro7 runs faster on the Air and we have also included some significant new performance improvements in the app — so WingX Pro7 appears ‘turbo-charged’ on the Air,” said Goldstein. Both companies are expecting the soon-to-be-released iPad Mini Retina to be similarly competent. Meanwhile, Jeppesen says the new Air has passed a physical challenge many of the customers for its Mobile FliteDeck product need to know it will survive.
Jeppesen announced that it has rapidly decompressed an iPad Air from as high as 51,000 feet and the tablet kept working properly. “The successful tests were completed to an altitude of 51,000 feet and are part of the program used by operators to obtain FAA authorization for in-flight use of Jeppesens industry-leading mobile app solutions on iPad,” the company said in a news release. It did similar tests on all previous models and all passed with flying colors. “No anomalies were detected during testing of any of the iPad models,” Jeppesen said. The new iPad Air is designed to run existing iPad apps, including those from Jeppesen, as is.
