Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 217; Flight Crew Total 12827; Flight Crew Type 7028
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Aircraft
Content Locker update was released during crew rest about 5 hours prior to push. I loaded this with hotel Wi-Fi (took about 1 ½ hours to download). After this download a message came out that a new AirWatch update was also being released (this happened while downloading my paperwork). A second release was loaded on flight deck with Cellular data. [During] pilot briefing all iPads were placed in airplane mode. At level off I attempted to open [iPad] to discuss IOE items with Captain student. To my surprise AirWatch now does some type of Authentication Request but we don't have Wi-Fi so it fails. 3 out of 4 iPads cannot open. No 777FM; FOM; WOM…nothing! I would love to have had FAA on board asking to see my FM; FOM; WOM.
We requested and received a waiver via [Dispatcher] to continue the flight with only one working EFB. The one working EFB belonged to a check airman which has a different software load. It is highly likely that if we hadn't had a check airman onboard we would have had zero working EFBs! Fortunately the flight proceeded uneventfully.
B777 flight crew on an international flight reported 3 of the 4 onboard iPads were unusable following a software update. The working 4th unit was on a different software version.