Software to replace documents in planes

Recently a flight purser of an airline was grounded for not following the ‘rules’. The purser thought the rules entitled him to a mandatory five-hour horizontal rest. The in-flight supervisor though hauled him up citing another rule book.

Such ambiguity can be avoided in the future on board new generation aircraft like Boeing 737-800, Boeing 777, Airbus 380 which comes with an electronic flight bag (EFB) system.

The EFB software is the modern form of a pilot’s carry-on flight bag which contains papers like aircraft operating manual, navigational charts, flight crew operating manual. It is a computing platform that helps reduce or replace paper-based reference material used by the flight deck and cabin crew.

“A lot of the new generation aircrafts manufactured by Boeing and Airbus have EFB on them. And to make use of this system, DGCA approval is needed. And to facilitate this we introduced this circular on June 13,” said a DGCA official. “With EFB on board it’s easier to update and upgrade the data to be used by the flight deck and the cabin crew. It is like having current data on hand and is more reliable. Plus it also saves on the use of paper,” he added.