Could One Cool Tool Put an A&P in Every Pilot’s Pocket? Almost.

Electronic flight bags (EFBs) may be on the verge of making a more effective business case for fleet wide adoption. Plus a new logging feature offers a proactive, real-time link between flight and maintenance operations.

You don’t expect to find a 50-pound "brick" aboard commercial aircraft, but that’s about the weight of leather flight bags loaded with printed aircraft operating and maintenance manuals, regulatory updates, maps, charts and other navigational reference documents. Pilots have been lugging these bricks for years, and so have A&Ps on the flight line or in the depot when an unexpected maintenance check involves consulting the paper-copy maintenance manual. Since the mid-1990s, one cool tool has offered an end to this backache: the electronic flight bag, in the form of hand-held electronic tablets to laptop/PC devices. Depending on class (see sidebar page 23), EFBs can weigh in at less than five pounds and provide the digital wizardry to contain all this relevant reference data and more.

Now onboard military, commercial and corporate jets as well as helicopters, EFBs feature hardware designed for optimal human factors via touch screens, bezel keys, avionics-grade optics and data declutter. Software enhancements provide real-time satellite weather, moving map displays for traffic and own-ship positioning, even night vision and surveillance linkage. Replacing paper documents with electronic data functionality has achieved an estimated cost savings of 4,500 staff hours and $1.5 million a year by one operator’s account.

Worldwide Ripple Effect

An EFB also begins to link the usually separate worlds of flight crews and maintenance crews, with far-reaching benefits. An EFB assists pilots in easily and accurately calculating weight and balance ratios on take-off so engine thrust levels can be optimized. "Every time you can derate a take-off, you extend the life of an aircraft by reducing wear and tear on the engine," says Robert Manelski, leader of Boeing’s EFB group. The OEM developed its own EFB system software in partnership with Jeppesen, packaged in hardware from Astronautics Corporation of America. Launch customers for the product in 2003 were KLM and Pakistan Airlines, with the EFB as part of an integrated avionics package for the Boeing 777. Currently, Boeing has 1,400 committed EFB system orders, with more than half of those on 777s, and a Class 3 EFB is standard on the new Boeing 787.

Dan Wade, vice president of business development for Astronautics, which has made EFB hardware since 1997, points to the value of user-friendly maintenance reporting for both pilots and mechanics. "The integrated use of an EFB can significantly improve the maintenance capabilities of an aircraft as it can be used as an on-board diagnostic and recording tool to troubleshoot avionics systems, including the flight management, communication, inertial navigation, air data and other systems. Failures of these systems or invalid inputs can be identified and time tagged by an integrated EFB for maintenance purposes, thereby reducing false pulls of these systems. EFBs also assist maintenance personnel to quickly identify these failed systems even if the failure is intermittent." Astronautics has sold more than 2,000 Class 3 EFB hardware units to date.

Besides making reference documents faster and easier to use electronically than in paper form, EFBs may be used to provide airport moving maps, which translates to fewer runway incursions and improved safety. The devices are also showing promise for facilitating faster maintenance-related turn time. "That’s where the real magic is with EFBs, motivating us to offer electronic maintenance log applications," comments Jim Schmitz, director of commercial aircraft aftermarket business development for Goodrich Corporation, an EFB hardware supplier. He believes that the reduction in paperwork and turn time provided by EFBs as compared to manual downloading of maintenance history and trending data "can reduce time and errors, and save money" (see diagram below) He goes on to suggest "this may be a crucial factor in developing a return-on-investment (ROI) threshold for the purchase of EFBs to within 12 months."

Goodrich has expanded its product portfolio to include stand-alone Class 2 and 3 EFBs, laptop docking station EFBs, plus offering full integration and supplemental type certification (STC) services to help operators prove the ROI business case. The company has five EFB STC programs currently in process. By year’s end, the company expects two additional airline customers — one in Europe and another in the Asia Pacific — to begin placing more than 800 Goodrich EFBs into service

Since airlines compete on cost, shorter ROI payouts are essential. Unexpected downtime for maintenance has a ripple effect on worldwide flight schedules and customer response to an airline’s service. Any tool that can reduce flight delays has a chance to buy onboard and contribute to a better ROI. A representative of Emirates Airlines confirms the EFB advantage on 31 Boeing 777s in its fleet that are outfitted with Class 3 EFBs, and 71 aircraft (both Boeing and Airbus models) using Class 1 EFBs. "Use of the Class 1 EFBs saves time that would be spent consulting paper maintenance manuals back at the line maintenance office. Depending upon the airport, this could typically be 30 minutes per maintenance event," states the rep.

Thirty minutes saved per squawk per aircraft per operator per day adds up during the long haul, one reason the utilization of EFBs has grown significantly during the past decade. American Airlines has EFBs in a portion of its fleet, ditto United, Continental, Lufthansa, Air France, Air New Zealand, Egypt Air, Air Canada, Emirates, JetBlue, Virgin America, All Nippon Airways, Singapore Airlines, cargo carriers UPS and FedEx, and many others. Class 3 EFBs are standard on the new Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 aircraft.

Continental Airlines (CAL) has a retrofit program underway to add EFBs to its entire fleet of 368 aircraft. Class 2 EFBs will go onboard its Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft by year’s end. Three Class 3 EFB systems have already been installed on 777s, with the other 20 in the fleet to be outfitted by late 2009. John Wiitala, CAL’s senior director of engineering, tells AM that "we will also be taking delivery of 25 787s with the same Class 3 EFB." CAL’s paper services have been supplied for many years by Boeing partner, Jeppesen, and will continue until CAL completely shifts to EFBs. While Wiitala notes that CAL still has limited experience with EFBs, "we expect to see a real boost in maintenance efficiencies when an electronic logbook is launched on the EFB. We’ll be testing such an application in 2008."

One Log, One Language

The electronic flight log (EFL) or electronic technical log (ETL) is an EFB add-on just now coming into its own. "The EFL concept barely existed in the airline vocabulary three years ago," states Nick Godwin, marketing director for civil aviation at Data Systems and Solutions (DS&S), an EFL software OEM and subsidiary of Rolls-Royce. "We see it as the closest to a ‘killer application’ on an EFB because every airplane in service anywhere in the world has to file a ‘ready for service’ sign-off between ending one flight and pushing back to start the next."

Here lies the greater magic of the electronic logbook within an EFB system: the potential for in-flight, real-time transmission between flight crew and maintenance crew that is affordable, proactive, allows access to aircraft system and component MRO history such as deferrals, as well as the lifetime status and location of rotables on a particular plane and in the maintenance inventory. Essentially, after a fault finding or maintenance alert, an EFL can activate the appropriate MRO ground response before an airplane makes its next landing.

Such connectivity may breach those two sacrosanct worlds of pilots and A&Ps, yet through this very exchange may be found the ROIs operators are counting on to improve their bottom line. DS&S’s Godwin believes "the electronic flight log is the value bridge between flight operations and maintenance/engineering. Without that link, the ultimate value of EFB systems won’t really fly." Granted, in flight-critical situations, ACARS can be used to make the flight-to-ground transmission. In Godwin’s opinion, this option is expensive, at about $5 per ACARS transmission.

David Allen, Boeing commercial’s chief engineer of crew services, observes that implementing EFBs isn’t an easy process for this very reason. "Flight ops and maintenance ops are seen as two different factions with two different mind-sets. A huge amount of overhead gets spent due to a lack of communication between the two."

The Wonder of E-logs

Boeing is testing an EFL product now, and expects it to be a natural addition to the OEM’s "solutions theme" in its integrated Class 3 EFB system. In Allen’s opinion, the EFL function "will allow us to tie codified fault readings to graphical interface so flight and maintenance crews know exactly what’s being written up, how it relates to standard maintenance functions and tasks, and this can be linked to aircraft health management in real time. Comparisons between aircraft faults and alerts and ground crew responses will allow an operator to use the electronic logbook in analyzing overall effectiveness in handling maintenance problems."

Codified fault readings and standardized terminology reduces the need for arbitrary interpretation of log entries and provides clearer reference to specific problems, agrees Ken Crowhurst of navAero. The company introduced its Class 2 t-BagC22 EFB hardware in 2005, and reports having the most STCs issued for its hardware and more aircraft flying with its hardware deployed than any other manufacturer. Continental Airlines is its newest t-BagC22 customer, as of November 7, 2007.

navAero is now working with numerous software partners and airline customers toward deploying ETL applications. Crowhurst, navAero’s executive vice president and managing director, relates that an ETL will help operators save money, and such a software application could be interfaced with SATCOM so that maintenance issues diagnosed in flight can be transmitted to ground ops dispatch. "This will result in repairs being initiated immediately upon an aircraft’s arrival, which saves time, minimizes deferrals and keeps aircraft moving."

Mark McCausland, president of Ultramain Systems, an aerospace MRO software supplier since 1985, is himself a 20-year military pilot. "I’ve seen good and bad mechanizations of software and have strong opinions about them. EFBs themselves are a relatively new technology, and replacing paper flight logs with EFLs is newer still. I believe an EFL is central to the target of connecting in-flight maintenance data to on-ground MRO support by meeting at data entry, rather than data retrieval."

Ultramain’s efbFlightLog software is Java-based and designed to operate on Class 1, 2 and 3 EFBs in the bizjet, commercial carrier, air cargo and military markets. McCausland reports Class 2 and 3 implementations underway with KLM and World Airways, using navAero’s hardware. From the MRO side, he adds that "in the real world, parts break on airplanes. Dealing with that encompasses line maintenance, which doesn’t have the routine scheduling of base maintenance. If you can address the unpredictable nature of these real-world maintenance squawks with a flexible and timely solution, that is a significant accomplishment."

Cool Tools’s Hot Cost

While EFBs with integrated EFLs can definitely offer flight and maintenance crews a way to cooperatively examine multiple issues affecting a flight in progress, purchasing them is not a trivial addition for an operator, no matter how cool the features. "This is one reason there are so few fleet wide applications of EFBs," McCausland notes.

DS&S’s Godwin can attest to the frontier territory of fleet wide-installed EFBs and the implementation of the DS&S Corewing ETL software, as his company is in this process with UK-based MyTravel Airways. Deployed during a year’s time by the end of this March, Corewing ETL systems have been integrated into Panasonic’s Class 1 CF-18 hardware onboard the charter airline’s 21 aircraft. To date, the ETLs have demonstrated a 96 percent first-transmission success rate, average transmission time of 65 to 80 seconds for a typical compressed file size of 20 kB, with no reported loss of data. The effort has the approval and participation of the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Godwin expects deployment time to be cut in half, and believes the direct link between flight crews and MRO through the ETL will provide a demonstration business case to the tune of 600 percent ROI improvement.

Among direct benefits cited by MyTravel Airways in its fleet wide use of EFBs are speed of data capture and reduced overhead by replacing manual paper tech log processes, the ability to conduct data mining for improved fuel uplifts and burns, a higher level of data integrity, and flight and maintenance ops connectivity via Gate Link, WLAN, and GPS/GPRS. Corewing ETL is part of the DS&S CoreControl aircraft software suite, including aircraft and engine health monitoring and EFB interface.

Despite cost realities, navAero customers have relayed to Crowhurst that "maintenance savings is in the top three criteria for selecting EFBs as part of an operations solution." To which Godwin states his belief that "EFL is redefining the business case for EFBs by truly streamlining operations with a paperless environment." MyTravel Airways identifies these issues to consider in purchasing EFBs: matching the best software/hardware platform to business operations, determining exact powering and stowing of an ETL, defining both test and rollout programs with a clear set of evaluation metrics, and engaging local flight authority in the evaluation process.

Ultramain’s McCausland has a no-nonsense take on justifying EFB/EFL technology cost: "The bottom line is that deferring maintenance is more expensive than fixing problems immediately. Multiple deferrals to save time in the short term can create a house of cards that comes tumbling down when the MEL [minimum equipment list] times out." He realizes the significant expenditure of EFB systems. "The use of an EFB is a major business process and work flow change right into the heart of electronic documents and signatures," he states. This requires an airline to make a full-culture commitment to the changes EFBs effect in software, training, planning and scheduling, materials, even carryover into client’s business processes. Or to make, as Boeing’s Manelski puts it, "a novelty into a foundational element."

McCausland has no doubt that the business case can be made for EFBs, especially with the addition of EFLs providing robust, resilient, redundant linkage benefits as never before between flight and maintenance operations. "These products are all about seeing aircraft as assets and then increasing asset utility. You just can’t do that with all those paper logs in a leather flight bag" (no matter how big the brick).

Class Distinctions in EFBs

Electronic flight bags fall into three classes with these distinctions:

• Class 1 units tend to be portable, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic tablets and laptop or PCs, and do not deliver or receive data from an aircraft’s avionics system.

• Class 2 EFBs are primarily "dockable" installations that may also utilize laptops or tablet PCs. Class 2 EFBs may receive data from a type-certified interface, but do not deliver data back to an aircraft’s avionics system.

• Class 3 EFBs are integrated within an aircraft’s entire information technology system.

Costs can range from $20,000 for Class 1 units to ten times that for Class 3 factory-built EFBs. FAA guidelines for EFBs are determined by the complexity of the EFB and the CFR 14 parts under which a particular aircraft operates (namely 91K, 121, 125, 129, and 135). Certification and approvals, which include training and a testing period, may come through principal inspectors, FSDOs, the Aircraft Evaluation Group (AEG) and TSOs. To date, FAA advisory circulars for EFB authorization include AC 120-76A (2003), AC 20-149 (2005), AC 120-91 (2006), AC 20-159 (4/07) and AC 91-78 (7/07). Software installed on Class 3 EFBs generally requires an STC or certification design approval that complies with RTCA/DO 178B, "Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification" (12/1999).