Issue: Several students have reported issues with their iPad Air 2 not charging.
Explanation: So far there have been five iPad Air 2s experiencing an issue with charging. The iPad battery will drop to zero and the student will plug it in overnight. The battery will still be at zero in the morning. Sometimes the battery will get up to 2%. The student unplugs and within a minute the battery drains to zero again.
At this point in time there is no solution for this issue, though I have had some success fixing it by following the workarounds below. The issue has not happened to other devices. Some of the iPads may have experienced this due to use of third party chargers. Others have used certified apple chargers and still experienced issues.
Workaround:
1. In order to get the iPad to charge, the iPad must be put in recovery mode. To do this, the user should perform a hard reboot with the device plugged in. Once the Apple logo appears, let go of the power button, but not the home button. The device will say connect to iTunes. Leave the device plugged in and it should charge for a few minutes. This process will need to be repeated a few times until the device has enough charge (at least 20%).
2. Once the device has a 20% or higher charge, it will need to be plugged into iTunes using the same method as above to put it into restore mode. The iPad will then need to be updated through iTunes. Go through the update process. When the device is updated, it will restart and most likely the charger will work.
If the charger does not work, the device may have physical damage. There is no SMC reset on an iPad, but power cycling can sometimes reset the battery and charging port, causing the charger to work. This can be done by holding the power button down and not letting go (while device is unplugged). The iPad will show the Apple logo several times during this process. After the third time the Apple Logo shows up and disappears, let go of the power button and press it again. The device will restart. Now plug the device into the charger and see if it works.
As mentioned above, I am not sure why this issue occurs. Some issues are related to using 3rd party chargers, while others appear to be firmware related, while others appear to be logic board related.
Since this is not something that should be done by a novice or beginner, we recommend filling out a support ticket if this issue appears.