A proliferation of built-in and portable tablet computers, and an expanding array of aviation-specific software applications, have made electronic flight bags (EFBs) — cutting edge technological marvels only a few years ago — common fixtures in airplane cockpits.
As new hardware and software have emerged, studies of their roles have followed, along with the development of new guidance from civil aviation authorities on the installation and use of three classes of EFBs (see “Hardware and Software”).
Hardware and Software
Electronic flight bags (EFBs) are defined by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as electronic display systems “intended primarily for flight deck use that [include] the hardware and software needed to support an intended function. EFB devices can display a variety of aviation data or perform basic calculations (e.g., performance data, fuel calculations, etc.). In the past, some of these functions were traditionally accomplished using paper references.”
- Class 1 EFBs are defined by the FAA as “portable, commercial off-the-shelf-based computers, considered to be [portable electronic devices] with no FAA design, production or installation approval for the device and its internal components.” They are not permanently attached or mounted in the aircraft and must be secured during critical phases of flight.
- Class 2 EFBs typically also are portable, commercial off-the-shelf-based computers and may be used without FAA approval for their design, production or installation. Unlike Class 1 EFBs, they are attached or secured to a permanent mount during use.
- Class 3 EFBs are installed in the aircraft “in accordance with applicable airworthiness regulations,” the FAA says.
There also are three types of EFB software applications: Type A applications, such as flight operations manuals, include no required aeronautical information and are intended for use on the ground or in non-critical phases of flight. Type B applications, such as weight and balance calculations, provide required aeronautical information; and Type C applications are approved by the FAA.
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Note
- FAA. Draft Advisory Circular 120-76B, Guidelines for the Certification, Airworthiness and Operational Use of Electronic Flight Bags (EFB)
Regulatory Revisions
Regulatory authorities in Europe and the United States have been working to revise their guidance on the use of EFBs.
At press time, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was preparing to issue a revision of its 2003 advisory circular (AC) 120-76A, Guidelines for the Certification, Airworthiness and Operational Use of Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs). A draft of AC 120-76B incorporated new information about portable EFBs, including Apple iPads and other tablet computers.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is accepting comments until June 18 on a notice of proposed amendment (NPA) that would modify the definitions of the classes and types of EFBs, as well as the definitions of the responsibilities of EASA and national regulatory authorities. The proposed changes are “largely harmonized” with current FAA guidelines, EASA said.
EASA characterized the NPA as an “urgent step,” noting that an absence of previous guidance from EASA has meant that most nations in the European Union have relied on a “somewhat obsolete” technical guidance leaflet (TGL 36) issued in 2004 by the European Joint Aviation Authorities.
“While technology has progressed, this TGL is … unable to offer guidance in view of the new safety challenges posed by the new EFB applications,” EASA said. “Continuous progress of information technology on the commercial market outside aviation, leading to increasing use and requests for EFB applications, requires rulemaking initiative from the agency in the earliest possible time.”
Safety Enhancements
EFBs have been in use since the early 1990s, when FedEx brought laptop computers onto the flight deck for pilots to conduct aircraft performance calculations. Since their inception, EFBs have been praised for enhancing safety — for example, by reducing errors in weight and balance calculations and takeoff performance computations, and through airport surface moving map displays that bolster situational awareness.
One relatively early example involved a FedEx pilot who used the performance software on his McDonnell Douglas MD-11’s EFB to identify an alternate runway at Memphis [Tennessee, U.S.] International Airport after calculations showed that the airplane was too heavy to take off, as planned, on another runway. Without the EFB software, offloading cargo would have been the only solution.1
More recently, however, a study conducted for the FAA by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center identified two accidents and 67 other events associated with EFB use (see “Accidents Involving EFBs”). The study reviewed National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident reports, and events reported to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) by private and commercial pilots operating under U.S. Federal Aviation Regulations Part 91 (“General Operating and Flight Rules”), Part 135 (“Commuter and On-Demand Operations”) and Part 121 (“Air Carrier and Commercial Operators”).
Of the 67 ASRS events, 32 reports — submitted by 24 Part 91 operators, five Part 135 operators and three Part 121 operators — involved the use of an EFB chart application. Thirty reports — all from Part 121 operators — involved flight performance calculations. Five additional five reports involved “use of documents of unspecified applications.”2
“The most common outcome in the ASRS event set was a deviation in heading, altitude or speed,” the Volpe report said. “Charts were typically in use on the EFB when such deviations occurred. Two key underlying issues appear to be that zooming and panning to configure the chart display for readability can induce workload that may impact other tasks and the display could be configured such that important information was out of view and missed when needed.”
Accidents Involving EFBs
EAccident investigations have identified at least three accidents in which issues involving electronic flight bags (EFBs) were cited as contributing factors. In their discussions of EFBs, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) cite the following crashes:1,2
- The Dec. 8, 2005, runway overrun of a Boeing 737 after landing at Chicago Midway International Airport (ASW, 2/08, p. 28). “Contributing to the accident were the programming and design of its on-board performance computer, which did not present inherent assumptions critical to pilot decision making,” said the summary by EASA.3 The EASA report also noted that U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators said that the airplane performance data that were programmed by the airline into the performance application were “less conservative than the performance data recommended by the manufacturer. The NTSB concluded that, if the manufacturer’s recommended airplane performance data were used in the airline performance calculations, the resulting negative stopping margins would have required the pilots to divert.”
- The Oct. 14, 2004, crash of a 747-200 during takeoff from Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) International Airport (ASW, 10/06, p. 18). The crew, using an EFB takeoff performance application, calculated incorrect V speeds and thrust setting. EASA said the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) had determined that it was “likely that the flight crewmember who used the EFB to generate takeoff performance data did not recognize that the data were incorrect for the planned takeoff weight in Halifax.” EASA said that the TSB also had found that the operator “did not have a formal training and testing program on the EFB, and it is likely that the user of the EFB … was not fully conversant with the software.”4
- The July 31, 1997, crash of a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 while landing at Newark (New Jersey, U.S.) International Airport (Accident Prevention, January 2001). EASA said that the NTSB investigation found that “some flight crewmembers may lack proficiency in the operation of airplane performance computing devices and that confusion about calculated landing distances may result in potentially hazardous miscalculations of available runway distances after touchdown.”5
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Notes
- EASA. Notice of Proposed Amendment No. 2012-02. March 12, 2012.
- Chandra, Divya C.; Kendra, Andrew. Review of Safety Reports Involving Electronic Flight Bags, DOT/FAA/AR–10/5. DOT John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. April 2010.
- The airplane crashed through two fences on airport property and onto a road, striking an automobile. A young boy riding in the car was killed, and another passenger was seriously injured. Three others in the car and 18 of the 103 people in the airplane received minor injuries, and the airplane was substantially damaged. The NTSB’s final report on the accident said the probable cause was the pilots’ “failure to use available reverse thrust in a timely manner to safely slow or stop the airplane.”
- All seven crewmembers — the only people in the airplane — were killed in the crash, and the airplane was destroyed.
- The five people in the airplane received minor injuries and the airplane was destroyed in the crash.
For example, a report in a separate ASRS publication included a Part 91K (“Fractional Ownership Operations”) jet captain’s description of a speed deviation that ASRS said occurred “on departure while the crew was trying to use a portable EFB with a screen size approximately 8 in by 5 in [20 cm by 13 cm].”3
The captain said that, while on a standard instrument departure (SID) from an unidentified airport, the pilots realized only after a query from air traffic control that they had exceeded the 250-kt speed restriction by 50 kt.
“We briefed the SID in detail, but we simply didn’t see the speed restriction,” the captain said. “I truly believe a main cause is there is not a standard place that speed restrictions are published on the charts. … The EFBs are also a contributing factor, as it can be difficult to see the entire chart without cumbersome scrolling.”
The Volpe report said that difficulties associated with flight performance calculations included “company policy deviations (e.g., takeoff from an unauthorized runway), incorrect computations and runway incursions. A variety of flight deck procedures issues are implicated. … For example, in four runway incursion reports, one crewmember was preoccupied completing calculations during taxi as the other crewmember missed a clearance restriction or hold short [instructions]. In two other cases, pilots did not set flaps for takeoff because they forgot to complete necessary checklists while they were preoccupied with the calculations.”
The report noted that pilots who had little experience with EFBs said that problems using the devices played a role in 11 reported events, including three events involving Part 121 operators.
The ASRS report quoted the captain of an air carrier flight crew, who described his first time using an EFB:
Climbing to our assigned altitude of 36,000 ft, we leveled at 34,000 ft for less than a minute. Control asked us if we were climbing to 36,000 ft, I replied affirmative, and we continued the climb. I did not notice on the preflight that the first officer put [Flight Level] 340 [approximately 34,000 ft] in our cruise page. This is why it leveled. We were both heads down trying to figure out our EFBs. … It was dark and hard to see the buttons that we needed to use on the outer edge of the EFBs. This is … the only aircraft that has an operational EFB, so it is not a normal practice for us. It was the first time that I … ever used one.”4
The NTSB’s final reports about two accidents said that the use of an EFB to calculate landing distance was a contributing cause of the accident, the Volpe report said, adding, “One issue was that assumptions underlying the performance calculations on an EFB must be presented to the crew as clearly as paper-based performance tables. A second issue was assessment of the adequacy of training and procedures for using EFB performance calculations functions.”
The Volpe report concluded that pilots can be distracted from “the usual multi-tasking flight duties” while configuring an EFB display for chart readability or computing flight performance, and it recommended an intensified emphasis on the need to continue monitoring other tasks while working with EFBs.
Kevin L. Hiatt, COO of Flight Safety Foundation and a former airline captain, said that the report’s conclusions should be viewed as a reminder of the need for thorough preparation and training in the use of EFBs.
“They’re only as good as the training you receive,” Hiatt said. “The other question is, ‘Are the data current and correct?’ If both of these conditions have been met, you’ve got a good, solid source of information. If they haven’t been met, you have the potential for a serious problem.”
EFBs of the Future
Today’s EFBs have a wide variety of applications ranging from electronic charts, checklists and documents to performance calculations, flight planning, voice data communications and more. Among the more significant recent developments has been the emergence of the iPad, with its many accompanying software applications, as an EFB.
In the United States, the first users were general aviation pilots, who do not need FAA approval to operate iPads and other tablet computers as EFBs. The FAA must approve requests by individual commercial operators to use the devices; several of those requests from charter operators and airlines have been granted over the past few months.
Airbus CEO Tom Enders, noting that the iPad is “changing the way pilots interact with the aircraft,” said early in 2012 that his company planned to offer “more operational benefits to airlines with powerful applications” to be used on iPads. “The impact of such products, from outside the world of aviation, [is] starting to dictate what people expect from us, and we can’t ignore that.”5
“The next step,” Rick Ellerbrock, director of aviation strategy for Jeppesen, and Skip Hallner, Jeppesen’s manager of global strategic relationships, said in Boeing’s AERO magazine, “will be adding real-time geo-referenced information and extending data-driven technology beyond the en route phase of flight.”6
“The future of advanced information management technologies for navigation includes a flight deck that is connected to the airline operations center with real-time data, integration of ground-based and airborne information systems and leveraging of the growing data-link capabilities of commercial airplanes. The next generation of electronic data-driven charting will extend today’s digital charting by providing a seamless gate-to-gate solution. It will also include smart information layers that overlay information such as notices to airmen (NOTAMs) and new weather products such as four-dimensional ‘weather cube’ data being developed in support of NextGen [the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System].”
The EFBs of the future will take on even more, they wrote, adding that a “completely digital flight deck,” is on the horizon.
Notes
- Croft, John. “Maintenance and the Electronic Flight Bag.” Overhaul & Maintenance Volume 10 (July–August 2004). Cited in “‘Paperless Cockpit’ Promises Advances in Safety, Efficiency.” Flight Safety Digest Volume 24 (June 2005).
- Chandra, Divya C.; Kendra, Andrew. Review of Safety Reports Involving Electronic Flight Bags, DOT/FAA/AR–10/5. DOT John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. April 2010.
- ASRS. “Paperless Flying — Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs).” Callback No. 369 (September 2010).
- Ibid.
- Airbus. “iPad Makes Its Way to the Airbus Cockpit.” Noticias: Airbus No. 140 (January–February 2012).
- Ellerbrock, Rick; Haffner, Skip. “Operational Efficiency of Dynamic Navigation Charting.” AERO (QTR_02.12). boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2012_q2/.