A-321 flight crew is informed by an FAA examiner that their ipad electronic table of contents is out...

Narrative:

FAA line check; FAA examiner states he's the office efb 'guru' checked ipad for currency and found my ipad TOC out of currency. FD-pro was okay; but I did not have the ipad TOC update from yesterday. The last update of ipad TOC was from the week prior. I had been working five days straight. I did a three day; two day combination. I stated I had an early check-in the day prior and that I thought we have been told not to attempt to update with hotel wifi. He states he's never heard of that and informed both me and the captain (also out of date); that we were not in compliance with SOP's and that we must update ipad TOC with our personal 'hotspot' from cell phones.....in the cockpit; or we were not going anywhere! We complied and synced our ipad TOC apps during the pre-flight.I had/have no idea how long 'syncing' will take for each update I perform; and choose to do them at home or in ops when I have a long amount of time. On the morning of the early check-in; and unsure of the time requirement to update/sync I choose to report to the aircraft instead of starting an update for an unknown amount of time. We had a busy day and on the overnight I didn't want to trust the hotel wifi.my only suggestion to the ipad system is to have a data plan attached with each individual ipad so as to be able to update as needed at anytime; anywhere as required or necessary. I do not feel pilots personal cell phones and data plans should be expected to be utilized to comply with FAA/SOP update guidelines.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A-321 flight crew is informed by an FAA examiner that their iPad electronic table of contents is out of date and must be updated prior to gate departure. This is accomplished using iPhone personnel hotspots at the examiners direction.

Narrative: FAA line check; FAA examiner states he's the office EFB 'Guru' checked iPad for currency and found my iPad TOC out of currency. FD-pro was okay; but I did not have the iPad TOC update from yesterday. The last update of iPad TOC was from the week prior. I had been working five days straight. I did a three day; two day combination. I stated I had an early check-in the day prior and that I thought we have been told NOT to attempt to update with hotel wifi. He states he's never heard of that and informed both me and the Captain (also out of date); that we were not in compliance with SOP's and that we must update iPad TOC with our personal 'hotspot' from cell phones.....in the cockpit; or we were not going anywhere! We complied and synced our iPad TOC apps during the pre-flight.I had/have no idea how long 'syncing' will take for each update I perform; and choose to do them at home or in ops when I have a long amount of time. On the morning of the early check-in; and unsure of the time requirement to update/sync I choose to report to the aircraft instead of starting an update for an unknown amount of time. We had a busy day and on the overnight I didn't want to trust the hotel wifi.My only suggestion to the iPad system is to have a data plan attached with each individual iPad so as to be able to update as needed at anytime; anywhere as required or necessary. I do not feel pilots personal cell phones and data plans should be expected to be utilized to comply with FAA/SOP update guidelines.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1246138
Time
Date	201503
Local Time Of Day	0601-1200
Place
Locale Reference	PIT.Airport
State Reference	PA
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	A321
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Electronic Flt Bag (EFB)
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying First Officer
Person 2
Function	Pilot Flying Captain
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy

A-321 flight crew is informed by an FAA examiner that their ipad electronic table of contents is out of date and must be updated prior to gate departure. This is accomplished using iphone personnel hotspots at the examiners direction.