What's in the Bag?

Predictions tend to be the pastime of fools. As Wilbur Wright admitted in 1908: "I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for 50 years. Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

Nonetheless, here’s a prediction that you can take to the bank (that is, if you still have any faith in banks): The transition in the aviation sector from paper to digital data — and the concomitant adoption of electronic flight bags (EFBs) — will accelerate during the next five years. Just as publishing, movies, music, and all other types of media are continuing their massive shift to digitization, so too are pilots and aviation mechanics.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in its EFB Advisory Circular (AC) 120-76A defines an EFB as: "An electronic display system intended primarily for cockpit / flight deck or cabin use." That rather prosaic definition doesn’t do justice to a new array of robust enhancements to EFBs.

With the power of today’s processors, EFBs are advancing at a bewildering rate — faster than many end users and regulators can absorb. This dilemma figured prominently during a recent Aviation Today webinar: "The Importance of Proper Documentation in Today’s Fast-Changing Enterprises," conducted January 27.

Speakers included Jeff Deskins, principal consultant, InfoTrust, a key company in the information processing industry for more than 25 years, and Joy Finnegan, editor-in-chief, Aviation Maintenance magazine. This webinar was recorded and archived; it remains available for registration on www.AviationToday.com.

As the 60-minute webinar explained, EFBs are increasingly light and Internet-enabled, allowing pilots and mechanics to perform a multitude of tasks without distractions.

The FAA has divided EFBs into three basic categories. Class I entails portable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) laptops or smaller hand-held devices with software applications that can incorporate electronic documents, performance calculations and charts. EFBs in this class typically cost less than $10,000 each and don’t require certification. They must be stowed at take-off and landing.

Class II EFBs, ranging in cost from $10,000 to $30,000 per unit, can dock with a certified crash-resistant mount. They can be powered on a continual basis and plug into non-critical aircraft systems, allowing aircraft health monitoring and reporting for maintenance purposes. Class III systems cost roughly $200,000 per flight deck and are mounted permanently as part of an amended type certificate. All three classes usually are scalable with a variety of software packages.

Seeking up to date information about EFBs, I visited in February the headquarters of Avionics Support Group (ASG), an avionics systems engineering company based in Miami. I sat down with ASG’s vice president of marketing and sales, Hugo Fortes, and asked him about the increasing prevalence and sophistication of EFBs, and what this trend means for the avionics and maintenance sectors. EFBs, of course, incorporate all of the elements within a pilot’s traditional carry-on flight bag, including the aircrew operating manual, aircraft operating manual and navigational charts.

However, the latest EFB models are more than just digitized manuals. They also host software applications that automate other functions previously conducted only by hand, such as take-off performance and fuel calculations.

"In the past, important cockpit functions were conventionally conducted using paper references or were based on data provided to the flight crew by an airline’s ‘flight dispatch’ function," Fortes said. "The best way to think of an EFB is as an electronic information management device that helps flight crews perform flight management tasks more easily and efficiently, in a reduced-paper environment."

Fortes noted that government regulators often fail to keep up with EFB innovation. "As EFBs get more sophisticated and incorporate more features, we have to help the FAA along, to get them up to speed on the new technologies," Fortes said. "We have to educate them because they start to fall behind."

It’s often true that human ingenuity outpaces hidebound regulatory systems. Clearly in the case of electronic flight bags, the track record of regulators in adapting to the pace and direction of innovation has been, well, a mixed bag.