Narrative:

We were around an hour into the flight cruising at FL350. I had my ipad on looking at [an aeronautical] application. That application drains the battery quickly and I noticed I was already down to around 70% power. We still had a long way to go so I decided to plug my ipad in using the company supplied long cord into the company supplied dual usb adapter that was plugged into the flight deck outlet. My ipad screen was on when I plugged the long power cord into it. I noticed as soon as I plugged it in; the screen went blank. My first officer's ipad was already plugged into the other port on the adapter. I started to try to get my ipad to come back up; but it was completely blank. I tried hitting the power button with a long hold and it still wasn't doing anything. After about 15 seconds of troubleshooting; we started smelling an acrid; burning electrical smell on the flight deck. We immediately turned around to look at the flight deck outlet. No smoke could be seen; but we immediately unplugged the adapter from the outlet. As soon as we unplugged it; the smell dissipated and we could pinpoint the smell to inside the adapter. It had a very strong; acrid; burnt electrical smell when you held it up to your nose to smell it. I then got up and smelled the outlet and looked at circuit breakers. There was no smell from the outlet and no circuit breakers were popped. It became quite obvious the problem was with the adapter. I then went ahead and did an arinc phone patch with dispatch and [maintenance control] and we all agreed the problem was the adapter and that it was safe to continue. We continued on to ZZZ without further incident.there was a write up a few days prior that the outlet was not charging the ipads quick enough and the fix was to replace the adapter; so I know the adapter was new to the airplane in the last few days. The incident ended up completely frying my ipad rendering it inoperative and frying my first officer's power cord which he had plugged in. I was using the company supplied long power cord and he was using the power cord that came with the ipad. So whatever the short was; it fried his cord but not his ipad and fried my ipad. I used the paper charts in the skip kit to continue. We almost ended up in a situation where we had no ipads because mine was broken and his wouldn't charge and almost ran out of battery.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737 Captain reported the Company supplied electric cord and adapter damaged the crew iPads when used for in-flight charging.

Narrative: We were around an hour into the flight cruising at FL350. I had my iPad on looking at [an aeronautical] application. That application drains the battery quickly and I noticed I was already down to around 70% power. We still had a long way to go so I decided to plug my iPad in using the Company supplied long cord into the Company supplied dual USB adapter that was plugged into the flight deck outlet. My iPad screen was on when I plugged the long power cord into it. I noticed as soon as I plugged it in; the screen went blank. My First Officer's iPad was already plugged into the other port on the adapter. I started to try to get my iPad to come back up; but it was completely blank. I tried hitting the power button with a long hold and it still wasn't doing anything. After about 15 seconds of troubleshooting; we started smelling an acrid; burning electrical smell on the flight deck. We immediately turned around to look at the flight deck outlet. No smoke could be seen; but we immediately unplugged the adapter from the outlet. As soon as we unplugged it; the smell dissipated and we could pinpoint the smell to inside the adapter. It had a very strong; acrid; burnt electrical smell when you held it up to your nose to smell it. I then got up and smelled the outlet and looked at circuit breakers. There was no smell from the outlet and no circuit breakers were popped. It became quite obvious the problem was with the adapter. I then went ahead and did an ARINC phone patch with Dispatch and [Maintenance Control] and we all agreed the problem was the adapter and that it was safe to continue. We continued on to ZZZ without further incident.There was a write up a few days prior that the outlet was not charging the iPads quick enough and the fix was to replace the adapter; so I know the adapter was new to the airplane in the last few days. The incident ended up completely frying my iPad rendering it inoperative and frying my First Officer's power cord which he had plugged in. I was using the Company supplied long power cord and he was using the power cord that came with the iPad. So whatever the short was; it fried his cord but not his iPad and fried my iPad. I used the paper charts in the skip kit to continue. We almost ended up in a situation where we had no iPads because mine was broken and his wouldn't charge and almost ran out of battery.

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.