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Electronic Flight Bag development advances
By Matthias Gründer
Cockpits of modern commercial aircraft still often look like the one in our lead photo. Every flight requires a vast amount of paper to be carried along – route charts, approach charts for airports, checklists, taxiway layout plans, weather reports, load manifests and, and, and …. But increasingly computers are expected to move in, helping to cut down on all this paper.
The paperless cockpit is a vision. But even today manufacturers and airlines do not yet speak of “paperless” but rather of “less paper”. Even this could be a major step forwards, and already for some time there have been attempts by software developers and aircraft manufacturers to call a halt on the flood of paper. They want to transform all the data necessary for the flight into screen displays, in the form of an “electronic flight bag” (EFB). So will the notorious pilot's flight bag in future contain nothing more than the captain's sandwiches?
If things turn out as Dr. Niels Stark, Business Unit Manager Airbus EFB at Jeppesen GmbH, expects, this could well be the case. “In the meantime we make a distinction between three classes of EFB,” explains Dr Stark:
Class I – laptops with flight data. However, these computers are not allowed to be switched on during the take-off and landing phases and have to be stowed securely. This means they can only serve as aids during pre-flight planning or during the cruise at altitude.
Class II – these are also laptops; however, they are integrated up to a point into the aircraft's flight management system via docking stations and also mounted securely, and as such they can be used at any stage of the flight.
Class III – fully integrated, factory fitted systems which receive the data either through transfer from CD/DVD or by remote data transmission.
Today some 85 percent of all EFBs already in use belong to Class I, but the trend is clearly towards the more advanced versions. “The customer itself decides which hardware he wants to use. We just provide the software applications, which run on all Windows-based systems,” says Niels Stark, who stresses the benefits of universally compatible solutions as they reduce the amount of training required. The graphical synchronisation of the EFB displays with those of the navigation display on the onboard flight management system is just one example.
Once an airline has decided on a Class II or III system and the type of computer on which the data will be displayed, a six-month transition period during which all the necessary papers have to still be carried along as backups must be completed. However, these maps, charts and documents are not allowed to be used during this period, as verified by independent inspectors. Only then is the new “paperless cockpit” certificated.
But EFBs are currently also offered by Airbus and Boeing themselves, and ironically, Airbus uses Jeppesen data sets, but Jeppesen in turn is a Boeing subsidiary. When one considers, for example, that the A380 will in principle fly paperless, this means that Airbus's arch rival is actually a participant in the development of the new megaliner. One can tell that introducing such systems is not exactly without its complications from the fact that an EFB suitable for use on the A380 will not be available until around August 2008. This means that although all the prototypes and the first series aircraft will have the hardware already installed, in the initial phase they will still be flown in the traditional way – with the cockpit full of paper.
Meanwhile the procedures to be followed in the future have already been defined: during the briefing, the “pilot non-flying” prepares the set-ups and loads them for the “pilot flying” in the cockpit via ethernet. In this way during the pre-flight planning phase the flying pilot has his head clear for the route and weather briefing and is able to familiarise himself with all the other details of the flight. All the data which he then retrieves on his display during the flight serves as an aide-mémoire. In this way it is not possible for him to be confronted by unexpected situations. Moreover, for safety and security reasons, only one of the two systems may be connected to the aircraft electrical system, while the other one is battery-powered.
On the displays it is possible to view virtually all the documents which the pilot also knows in paper form. The most important of these are naturally the route charts which, in Jeppesen's systems, deliberately have the same graphical layout as the ones with which the pilot will be familiar right from his basic training days, which of course were in printed form. However they also incorporate a number of zoom functions, colour coding of the most important information and a special presentation mode for night-time flying. Moreover, all the screens are designed as touchpads. In the future they will also display weather information, and at Jeppesen they are already working on a solution under which it will be possible in the future to display weather updates refreshed over satellite link every 15 to 30 minutes.
Another important resource for the crew is airport moving maps showing all the runways and taxiways of the departure and destination airports, and also of all the possible diversion airfields. These will help the pilots to safely find their parking position and avoid collisions with other moving vehicles, such as are a regular feature of airport operations today, especially during fog or poor weather “We could develop these maps into taxi guidance systems,” says Dr Stark, “but neither the airlines nor the airport operators want that.” They are afraid that pilots would then concentrate solely on their display during taxiing and cease to look out of the window.
Updating and maintenance of the databases will be carried out as per normal by Jeppesen. Usually the airports report structural changes themselves so that both the printed charts and also the electronic data sets can be amended. But sometimes the experts also come across discrepancies from different sources, for example, satellite photos, notify the airports and carry out the survey themselves if necessary. Their ground control points, large brass posts with all the particulars, must not be removed or moved and are identified in such a way that they can also be seen by satellites – everything in the interest of flight safety. And the future? Linux-based systems are expected to improve reliability, and from 2008 the next applications will be offered. The final definition phase is already under way.
Just a clever toy?
Airline pilot Markus Kirschneck, spokesman of the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), sees no more than this in the EFB at the moment. In his view, the systems are still technically much too susceptible to faults, and he completely rejects the notion of Class III: “The data on these devices is currently still unprotected and could be influenced by outsiders. That runs counter to all the principles of defence against terrorism,” the experienced commercial pilot believes. At any rate he advocates backups in the form of printed charts and other data sets, as every pilot has to be in a position to safely land the aircraft by conventional methods in the event of total system failure. He is also more than sceptical about the Windows-based presentation: as every PC user will have experienced with more or less pain, there has never yet been a single Windows program that was totally error-free.
(For further information on the VC's views, see http://www.vcockpit.de/policies.php?artikel=25)
From page 90 of FLUG REVUE 9/2007
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