[hiteho]

I know a few private charter pilots who are massively excited this morning. The iPad Mini is the only iOS device that is big enough to use at arms length, small enough to fit in a cramped cockpit, and approved by the FAA. They use a handful of apps during flight for planning, weather, approach data and whatnot. There has been a lot of fear among the local pilot community that the Mini would be discontinued. While the device might not be mainstream, for their admittedly specialized use-case, no other computer will do.

[mediaman]

Yes, the use of iPads has had a huge impact on aviation. Fancy built-in devices that cost $25k-80k to implement in the cockpit can be replicated on an iPad, and the mini is the best fit. A lot of pilots were really bummed when it appeared that Apple had given up on the mini.

Of course, it can't be used as a primary instrument since it's not certified, but it's amazing paired with ForeFlight so you can see synthetic visualized terrain (you're stuck in clouds, and want to see where the ground is), you can see where other planes are in the airspace, their altitude and direction via ADSB-in, you can do flight planning on it and easily pull approach plates or pull up airport diagrams, it allows you to see the terrain profile of a planned trip much more easily than referencing the charts, and it can serve as a backup to your primary instruments if you have an electrical or vacuum failure in the plane.

[geerlingguy]

Similarly, in the medical field, there have been some areas where the mini was a perfect fit for a doctor's pocket or certain devices, and they had a lot of custom apps and mounts so they could replace a lot of other types of devices.

[halbritt]

Oh, hey, that reminds me. I also use mine with an external GPS (Dual XGPS) for charts while sailing and for topo maps with Gaia GPS when I need that kind of thing.