Paper flight manuals replaced with iPads

[Mark Grima]

Guys,

Just read this on smh.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-...602-1fhxu.html

Appears Alaskan are replacing their paper manuals with iPads for their inflight manuals.

Apperently the airline is looking at reducing injuries to pilots.

For the pilots amungst us, what do you think of this? I guess it is the way of the future, however I for one am not really a fan of, 1) searching through and 2) reading lengthy documents on a computer screen. Often find my self printing a document.

Cheers

M

[Mick F]

G'day Mark,
I fly aircraft equipped with electronic charts integrated into the aircrafts avionics. We have the ability to bring up whatever chart we choose onto our MFD and where the chart is scaled, an aircraft will be displayed on the chart showing your position.

The pro's:
1) The ability to bring up whatever chart you wish, without hunting your way through the various folders, only to find the chart is missing, ripped or unreadable
2) The chart is displayed at a larger size than normal with the ability to zoom even more
3) Very easy to update
4) Much more user friendly in a high workload cockpit (provided you know what you're doing of course

The cons:
1) iPad, unless it's hardwired, when the battery runs out, back to the paper charts you go
2) If your avionics fail, back to the paper charts
3) Unless you have multiple redundancy (seperate electronic flight bags/iPads), then you still need the paper charts

There's probably always going to be people against it, but after many years of pulling out the charts all the time, I LOOOOVE my electronic charts.

Mick

[Philip Argy]

I know we keep hearing about the imminent demise of paper, but it is remarkably enduring, pun intended.

Surely at least one hard copy of maps will be somewhere on the aircraft, and it will need to be up to date. Subject to that, I agree with Mick that the tablet has display and manipulation capabilities that make for a nicer user experience in a side by side comparison.

My confidence in avionics, especially in some aircraft makes, is low enough to still demand that there be the fallback ability to do everything manually from flying the a/c to navigating.

AF447, Learmonth, etc all start pointing to an inconvenient truth that I predict will lead to mandated 'manual' fallback capability in the not-too-distant future.

[Grahame Hutchison]

I have started to you my iPad 2 for my flying, and now have all the airport charts for locations I visit as individual PDFs in iBooks. They are very quick to bring up, and can scale up with a simple swipe of the screen. Other useful documents such as the latest Visual Flight Guide, ERSA Conversion Charts, Runway Safety and Sydney Basin Visual Pilot Guide are great on iPad, even if you are only using then from a planning point of view. I took my iPad with me on a flight out to Orange, however the mission was photography so I did not get it out of my flight bag. For Private VFR flying, battery should not be an issue, however my only concern is screen readibility in daylight and strong sun.

It's also great to have all this information at hand on the iPad to simply read up on things, or answer a question or two.

I am happy to give it a go as part of my flight planning, and reference while flying, and this was the main reason for the purchase. There is an iPad NAIPS type App, so you can sumbit your Flight Plan to Airservices Australia using 3G, very handy.

All the paper work is still in the flight bag on the back seat as usual.

[Hugh Jarse]

iPad, unless it's hardwired, when the battery runs out, back to the paper charts you go

Mick, an increasing number of airliners have PC power supplies on the flight deck. The aircraft I fly (E-Jet) does. Problem solved

I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to retrofit flight deck power to those aircraft that don't.

[Mark Grima]

Interesting to hear your comments guys, you obviously use them for your work day in-day out.

Cheers

M

[Mick F]

Ahh spoilt buggers. In true Beechcraft fashion, we have nice flash looking screens and an FMS, but everything else is still very 1960's, . So the best we can do is a cigarette lighter socket.

We have new aircraft arriving at the moment that have been kitted out with onboard 3G Wifi, USB connectivity and I believe satellite internet capability as well.

Mick

[Mick F]

Pic of the E-Chart setup in the Collins Proline 21 glass cockpit. Very easy to scroll over the chart to see the various information.

Mick

[Matt_L]

Mick,

nice pic. Just wondering is the magenta aircraft symbol selected off in this situation or what? its usually displayed?

secondly- I see TFC on- if a TCAS alert is issued during an approach or with the display up, is this indicated overlayed on the approach chart on the MFD or how?

I believe the FAA in America has already mandated IPAD integration on flightdecks as an approved alternative to paper charts- including smaller aircraft, however CASA as usual is always lagging behind so this could be a fair bit off.

An Australian developer is currently developing an addition to an already existing program for the IPAD/Iphone which will display all the already accessible info- ie the law docs - AIP etc, the SID/STARS and approach charts (DAP'S) and now it will include VTC, VNC, ERC and WAC aeronautical charts on which the aircraft position will be transposed and calculations will be possible - the screenshots suggested it being able to act as a secondary means of navigation- with track, distances, speeds etc and very accurate high res maps displayed. Obviously this type of program will need approval before its brought onto the flightdeck as a primary means but it is certainly an interesting proposal

[Mick F]

Matt,
I took that photo in the cruise while doing nothing. So the magenta aircraft isn't displayed because it's outside of the range of the plate.

The TCAS is also displayed on the PFD (the chart is on the MFD), so unless you deselect the TCAS display on the PFD, then there's no need for it on the MFD. Having said that, I'm not actually sure what would happen if you did have it deselected from the PFD and a traffic alert came about. Might need to check that one out in the book.

During approaches, departures, normal flight, you don't have the plate displayed constantly. It's very simple to bring the plate back up at the push of a button to refer to it when required and just as easy to scroll to the next plate you selected by simply turning a ****.

Mick