More than a decade after the release of the iPad, what’s the latest technology behind Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs), and what are the prospects for future functionality?
Electronic flight bags bring many benefits to the flight deck: more information, less to carry, better functionality than paper, and in many cases live or recently updated information. Whether it’s maps (including airport moving maps), charts, weather forecasts, flight planning, flight crew operations or techniques manuals, minimum equipment lists, calculators (for performance, cruise, takeoff and landing, weight and balance, and other requirements), airline operations or crewing apps, EFBs are more widespread than ever, and indeed in some cases are indispensable [PDF].
“Gone are the days when pilots have to go through reams of data and several copies of flight maps to plan their journey,” John Peterson, senior director for offering management, services & connectivity at Honeywell Aerospace tells us. “We are now in the era of everything being connected, where every bit of critical information is at the pilot’s fingertips.”
At cargo airline UPS, says Wayne McClaskey from flight operations, a priority with EFBs is electronic delivery of flight plans, which offers a number of improvements over the paper option: crews can enter the preflight workflow much sooner, with more advanced dialogues with dispatchers, easier coordination about fuel and routing — all ending up with more efficient flights and fewer delays.
“As with any new technology or functionality, each new investment must ‘buy its own way’ into the business with a clear justification case,” McClaskey says. “Upgrading equipment or avionics on any aircraft is never simple or quick, and even more difficult when you have avionics that are performing as expected. We are always looking for creative ways to leverage what we have installed.”
Today, EFBs are categorised [PDF] by the FAA into one of three classes:
- class 1, commercial off-the-shelf computers, tablets or smartphones, with no FAA design, production or installation approval required
- class 2, which are similar but attached to a permanent mount, may connect to data or power ports, and have requirements about their ease and security of of mounting
- class 3, a full aircraft component, installed per regulations
UPS is in its third refresh of tablet-based EFBs, and finds that the roughly annual release cycle of these tablets lends itself to a 3-4 year life cycle given their battery lifetimes and advances in processing power that enable new capabilities.
“UPS began deploying the 4th generation iPad for EFB use in 2013,” McClaskey tells us. “The device easily handled the plethora of required documents and charts, leading to additional reference and training material being added. We see the EFB evolving even further into a communications device for our crew members. This includes the ability to check-in for flights and provide electronic flight plans and last-minute changes while on the ground.”
In addition, he says, UPS is “pursuing detailed fuel analytics that allow pilots to see improvement opportunities in all phases of flight [and] looking for ways to leverage our industry-leading ADS-B equipage to provide better situational awareness.”
The future: moving from device-based to service-based EFB models
An option with current and future generation EFBs is to change from a device-based model to a service-based model, depending on which solution or solutions are purchased.
The key question, says Honeywell’s Peterson, “pilots are using their most trusted applications on their favourite personal electronic device. While vastly more convenient it has created a completely new problem — how do I get all these different applications to work seamlessly together?”
Honeywell Forge Flight Services, Peterson explains, is one answer. He describes it as “an all-in-one solution for flight planning and support that can offer a wide range of flight services including Flight Planning, Dispatch Services, Datalink, Cabin Services and others.”
Systems like this work across platforms and devices, and also feed data back into the airline’s wider system to generate insights to improve flight operations and glean insights into other problems: pilot fatigue, for example.
“As aircraft get more connected — including EFBs — they will generate tons of valuable data,” says Peterson. “Airlines are already using AI to analyse these data for things like predictive maintenance scheduling to optimising fuel emissions.”
Fundamentally, Peterson says, “connectivity, networks, applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs) integrating with avionics is rapidly replacing the traditional model of an EFB. Pilots and operators want a software application that works within their existing systems on their most familiar devices.”
Opportunities and challenges around connectivity will define the next phase
At present, there is a patchwork of connectivity options for EFBs. Some (especially older models) require plugged-in Internet, some are wifi-only, some have cellular mobile coverage for on-ground use, and some have a mixture of these options.
As the cost of inflight connectivity changes, as more operators use physically or virtually separated networking to ensure flight deck and cabin connectivity are not mixed, and as the price of in-device connectivity like 5G drops, it will become cheaper, easier, and more widely accepted to connect EFBs inflight.
With the arrival of new 767 aircraft that offer inflight connectivity, UPS is working on a proof of concept to add weather capabilities to its EFBs, adding a variety of information for flight deck decisionmaking: more efficient wind step climbs, additional information for weather deviations.
Indeed, says UPS’ Wayne McClaskey, “leveraging the technology advances in the tablet EFBs has allowed us to overcome some of the deficiencies in the older avionics. In our newer aircraft, we are taking advantage of the IP and connectivity capabilities to leverage those new opportunities for our crew members in the tablet EFBs.”
As a next step, UPS is working on an inflight and post-flight big data gathering and analysis programme, allowing the airline to stream data from aircraft during and after flight, process it and better understand anomalies and outliers in flight.
The future is a bright one, with closer integration between aircraft avionics and the EFB, growing connectivity, new software and hardware applications, and new solutions based on them. Flight plans will be pushed to the aircraft, traffic and alternates calculated automatically, while fuel and weather optimisation will be real-time — all automatically logged.
While there will inherently be hurdles to come, regulatory in particular, “with time,” says Honeywell’s Peterson, “I believe these challenges can be overcome as along as we can convince the regulators and other stakeholders of the benefit versus perceived challenges.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 14th October 2021
Feature Photo credit: British Airways
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