Can you use the AC charger that comes with the ipad or does it have to be something that is aviation certified?
On many aircraft you can charge from outlets available on the flight deck using the Apple charger but this sort of thing has to be approved by the feds for each carrier and each specific aircraft type from what I've seen. Also, most operators are required to have a backup battery carried for the iPads. I say 'most' since so much of this stuff seems to depend on how the carrier's PI (Principal Inspector) interprets AC 120-76C (see:
http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/m...AC_120-76C.pdf ).
Here is Apple's list of iPad battery safety certifications for compliance with AC 120-76C:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204509
From talking with colleagues, the level of user control of what goes onto the iPads seems to vary widely. Some carriers say 'you are adults, make sure the required aviation apps are working, the rest is up to you'. Others have the iPad locked down so that it will do little more than run company approved apps. If there is a mishap or other reportable incident recent experience shows that the feds will harvest stuff off the company PED (Portable Electronic Device in FAA-speak).
As always, some idiot will try to 'jailbreak' the company iPad and folks will used unauthorized GPS's, bluetooth headphones and speakers and watch movies while they are supposed to be flying the plane.
I would be very surprised if its just individuals randomly updating their iPads which caused this. Something which 'appears' to be fairly widespread, and happened in a relatively short period of time, looks more like it had been initiated from a centralised source, via an update or something - who knows! Yes it would be interesting to know if this only affected flights which were still on the ground?
Some airlines have weather and flight plans uplinked to the iPads (and FMS's), others cut costs by having the overpaid pilots tediously type everything back in the old fashioned way from faded dot matrix printer output. Don't know about AA. Was it just the data link that failed perhaps?
This report says the AA B-737's were affected and some flights had to taxi back to get into wifi range of the terminal:
Fondleslab deaths grounded ALL of American Airlines' 737s ? The Register