Only a few years ago all pilots carried their trademark flightbags – large, black box-like briefcases. These were usually covered in stickers showing destinations, aircraft types and the logos of airlines and flight training organisations. One glance at a well-stickered bag provided an instant guide to the owner’s age and professional career.
Now with laptops or – increasingly – tablet computers containing all the manuals, charts and approach plates that the flightbags used to contain, pilot luggage has become more compact and less personalised. There must be very few airline pilots now who still rely on paper as their primary source of operational information, although for steadily declining numbers of crew, a paper library is still provided on the flightdeck as a backup, mainly for minimum equipment list (MEL) reasons.
Pilots whose airlines have fully adopted the use of electronic flightbags, whether in their simple laptop/tablet form (Class 1), the partially integrated laptop/tablet (Class 2) or the fully cockpit-integrated (Class 3) form are unanimous in their verdict that they would not wish to go back to the old system. But that does not mean they have no criticisms of the EFB system and the ways pilots use them. In fact they have plenty of negative observations but insist these are not good enough reasons to revert to the old ways, they merely demonstrate a need for pilots to be disciplined and well-trained in the use of this still relatively new resource.
Consider the views, for example, of a senior captain based in Germany with a major European charter airline, speaking about how comparatively easy it is now to update information: “What tedious work it was [weekly] to renew the [paper] charts in your bag. But, you had to touch them. Even if one did not look at the charts when putting them in the folder – you knew something had changed at an airport. It was the same for all the national regulations once or twice a year, or for ICAO Pans Ops [procedures for air navigation services – operations].”
All the pilots quoted in this report are on the Royal Aeronautical Society flight operations committee but, in deference to their employers, their names and airlines are not used. One is a Germany-based pilot flying Boeing 737s, one UK-based flying 777s, and one Gulf-based flying Airbus widebodies, all with well-known carriers. Their views are their own, but they are given in the context of the RAeS operations committee discussion about EFB use, and their own experience of their airline’s EFB policy and standard operating procedures.
The Germany-based pilot presses his point: “Today the pilot just presses the update button and gets the feeling that not only is the system is up to date but also his brain. But it is not. Awareness of change is a problem.” He poses a rhetorical question: “It’s the same with aircraft or company documentation – all green, all current – but is the pilot?” He is not implying that pilots are unaware of the basic truth that change occurs frequently, rather that, unless a crew knows change has taken place, the default assumption on setting off on a familiar trip is that everything is the same as before. The risk is that people have an inbuilt tendency to see what they expect to see – to make reality fit the expectation. That should not normally be a critical issue, but it could be if the surprise change were delivered in a period of high workload. On the positive side, however, it is now significantly less likely that crews will be using out of date information without knowing it, which is a trap the old system could regularly set for pilots.
Knowledge suffers too, he believes: “Definitely, since we started using digital publications, knowledge has decreased. The haptic bit is missing.” As for crew behaviour when pilots and cabin crew meet for pre-flight briefings, he observes: “Being able to have access to flight plans and weather data during breakfast has its advantages. Pilots have a better picture when entering the crew room. But then, listening to pilots briefing a flight, you can hear things like – ‘yes, I have seen that’, or ‘oh, is there an updated flight plan? – I already loaded it an hour ago’." Discussions among the crew tend to be shortened, which he thinks is not good because although they are well-informed and have updated information at their fingertips, their preparation has been done “on their own” and they could make an assumption that the other pilot has gathered precisely the same information, which may not be true.
Here are the views of the UK-based pilot, an avowed lover of the iPad Class 1 EFB who is clearly not convinced that installed Class 3 installed systems add anything really useful to the pilot’s ability to do the job when compared with the accessibility and versatility of the tablet computer. However he admits to having only a small amount of exposure to the Class 3 kit. This is what he says – some of it in quotation marks, some paraphrased – about what the tablet computer, with a few additional apps installed, does to change his working world:
“Control of information is vital. As a training captain I would only encourage use of company and company-approved apps. But this is plenty enough to give you easy access to a huge amount of information. I have found that compared with the way I used to fly, it has greatly increased my situational awareness and enabled me to pass this information on in a much more user-friendly way.”
He provides examples: “Just before walking to the aircraft I download the old paper flight plan digitally and the AIS/Wx brief [aeronautical information system/weather]. I then use apps to download and overlay the following: the latest significant weather chart, and radar pictures along the route of cloud and precipitation; Pictures of all possible diversion airfields from satellite imagery and the latest ATIS [aviation terminal information system] and forecast weather; a far more complete passenger list with many more details about their onward bookings, previous handling etc; a more route-specific brief with pictures of all my crew and commercially sensitive route information; a terrain output of the entire route with high ground, with a resultant depressurised flight profile for cabin crew info which I email onto them; a brief for cabin crew of where the aircraft is, timings, weather and exchange rates for trip etc, again emailed on.”
Airbus offers an EFB solution via its FlySmart iPad applications
Airbus
Raising the question of where he gets his airborne reading time from, this tablet EFB enthusiast makes the point that “every single book and manual that was on the aircraft is available in the latest digital form, with all amendments done, plus some more books. On top of this are apps to cover cold weather operations, low visibility operations, conversion tables etc. And rather than having to search through an index, search engines within the apps find so much more information on a given subject than a line pilot would normally remember. On top of this are many apps to make life down the route easier, including hotel briefs, bidding programmes and the ability to submit any number of forms.”
Having said all that, he issues a warning about disciplined tablet EFB use: “Pilots must report with a fully charged iPad, not use unapproved apps and only use them at appropriate times and then only one at a time from push back to shut down. But I would never go back, it is the best thing that has happened to commercial aviation for many a year. My situational awareness is far better now than it ever was before.”
The Gulf-based captain does some thinking aloud. He ponders: “As for the present EFB Class 1, 2 and 3, I'd say they are now old technology. A tablet with mounting hardware on the flightdeck is probably the way to go for the short term but an integrated flight deck platform with gatelink updating is probably an even better approach, where everything appears on the forward NAV/PFD [navigation/primary flight display] screens.” He then adds: “As for the tablet, I have done quite a lot of testing with different models and I think the tablet has a place as a supplement to the EFB where an EFB has been installed, but it can stand alone. With the tablet as a supplement, the pilot has a quick option for searching items of interest or reference and it can work in tandem with the EFB for improved overall situational awareness.”
There are problems, he admits: “I personally enjoy the paperless environment and hate it when I have a Class 1 and have to go back to paper. But one of the biggest problems I see is that if the EFB isn't totally integrated, then the search function can become an issue. I spent 40min on a recent flight searching for a reference on an airspace issue. If I had the paper I probably could have found it in 5 minutes. If you take the worst case scenario, for example go-around, diversion, system failure, night and thunderstorms, then trying to find an electronic reference increases the workload by a sizeable factor over the old paper method and is probably not possible. When airlines try and save a few bucks in the paperless environment then they can actually increase the human factor problems for the pilot, as they don't see the connection between the display of information versus the use of information. This is something we as pilots have to keep an eye on.”
The UK-based captain's observations about the ability of pilots, on tablet EFBs, to combine authorised and unauthorised app-enabled information, give a hint of the problems that can arise simply because of the amazing capacity of today’s compact information processing equipment.
The question is, when do you stop? Just how much information can a pilot realistically use? He explains some of the systems he has already referred to: “The overlays are not approved, however, the source company documents are used to provide information for other apps which are approved. An example would be one programme that scours several company-approved sites to obtain the flight plan, AIS [aeronautical information service], crew, load, exchange rates, terrain etc and provides one document with all the information sanctioned by the company. Another obtains all the pilots’ rosters and bids for work, allowing swapping and bidding, again approved by company. Outside of this are other apps, all great sources of information, but none official – and all must be treated as such. The information is not approved and therefore not checked. So, like the overlays, they need to be checked against the official output of significant weather charts and used with caution.”
The Germany-based captain picks up on the same point: “Even the line between official and unofficial information becomes blurred. The iPad app giving the official information is so close to ‘unofficial’. For example weather apps, or windfinder.com. Suddenly the METAR or FC [destination weather or forecast chart] is replaced by windfinder or Weather.com.”
Therefore, as much as he and his fellow captains on the RAeS flight operations committee like the new systems, they keep returning to the need to use them in a disciplined way. His final observation is on flightcrew cultural issues: “At least there are no digital toothbrushes and shirts, so we still carry a bag we can put stickers on.”
Source: Flight International
