Aircraft Management Technologies Co-Founder Shares Opinions on EFBs

Steve Hardgrave, a co-founder of Aircraft Management Technologies (AMT), and presently its chief operating officer, shares some insightful views on electronic flight bags and how they can fundamentally change airline operational processes.

Hardgrave is a former US Navy aviator and has previously held managing director level positions with United Technologies and with Teleflex in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland.  He has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, an M.S. in operations research from the US Naval Postgraduate School, and a B.A. from Duke University.

The interview is presented here in its entirety as it was posted on AMT's Website at www.airmantech.com.

How would you describe the IT landscape in the aviation industry with respect to Electronic Flight Bags and other new technologies?

I would view EFBs and connected aircraft technologies as being one of the biggest catalysts to drive sustainable cost improvement in aircraft operations, particularly for low cost airlines.  EFB's can enable on-board crew reporting, fuel reconciliation and rapid integrated aircraft turn around at all bases.

To date the aviation industry has been relatively slow to adopt commercial, mass market-derived technologies that have been used extensively in other industries.  These would include the use of tablet and laptop PCs and PDAs, wireless communications, and electronic documents.  This is starting to change, but it’s taken a while for airlines to move to commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies in the same way that other industries have.

What are the business drivers behind adopting EFB technology?

I firmly believe that process improvement is the only reason to adopt this technology.  The best proof of this is the counter-examples—those airlines who have implemented EFB projects but have not addressed the underlying business processes that could and should change as a result.  This often happens because a "hobbyist", a computer enthusiast, thinks it would be nice to have PCs on the aircraft.  The purpose of this technology is not to give the pilots, or the engineers, or anybody else, a nice gadget to play with.  The purpose needs to be cost savings and improvements in operational performance.  Through implementing EFB technology airlines eliminate process duplication, improve co-ordination across functions, and make better information available faster those who need it, where and when they need it.

Can you give an example of successful technology change in aviation?

An example of step change in airline IT would be the use of the World Wide Web for reservation transactions—this has been a key element in reducing costs for the low cost carriers.  A natural extension would be using the web to also exchange electronic documents, such as technical records or documents and manuals.  That is happening, but it’s been a fairly slow process. 

How do the airlines and regulatory authorities view EFBs?

With respect to Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs), my perception is that most airlines haven't yet grasped how profoundly these types of technologies can change their business processes.  Without going into excruciating detail on the FAA’s regulatory guidance, it basically defined three classes of hardware and three types of software, what you can do with each, and what the approval requirements are for each. Other authorities’ guidance has been quite similar.  In hardware, Class 1 is a standalone laptop or tablet PC, Class 3 is a fully integrated system similar to traditional installed avionics systems, and Class 2 is in between the two, typically derived from something like a rugged tablet PC but mounted permanently in the aircraft.  For the software, Type A is pre-composed, fixed presentation of data that would traditionally been presented in paper format; Type B includes dynamic, interactive uses of data; and Type C would be similar to traditional certified avionics software.

My read of the FAA guidance on EFBs, and later guidance by other airworthiness authorities, is essentially that the regulators have gotten the big picture faster than the operators have—the regulators are saying that way you use computers on airplanes can fundamentally change from what you've done in the past.  Traditionally, computers on airplanes were very expensive, highly certified equipment that had a very long service life.  That paradigm was appropriate for things that affected flight safety, like navigational data bases or flight management systems.  But for business processes, you need a totally different model—you need affordable, adequate, high performance COTS equipment, and by definition that type of thing changes much faster and has a much shorter lifecycle than the traditional avionics equipment.

The other thing that's only starting to be broadly understood and accepted is that EFBs can be very broad in scope.  Many airlines have adopted quite narrow, limited functionality and by doing so have missed an opportunity to gain as much benefit as they might have.  If you read the FAA guidance on EFBs (Advisory Circular 120-76A), and particularly the appendices that give examples of types of applications you can host on an EFB, it really touches on almost every operational process of an airline.  The message, I think, is that here is an opportunity to radically change the way the way in which you operate aircraft, in all respects.  This includes maintenance, dispatch, flight operations, data distribution, crew training, everything to do with flying the planes.

Can you describe current airline EFB activities?

Several airlines have started off with relatively narrow projects, as I mentioned before.  For example, an airline might use an EFB to do aircraft takeoff performance calculations on a PC instead of the typical existing method of referring to a printed table for the airport, runway, and flap setting you're using and then interpolating between the table entries for the temperature and winds at the time of takeoff.  Changing that to an electronic process is beneficial in several ways—the calculation will be more accurate, the process is less prone to human error, the administrative overhead in maintaining the data is reduced, etc.

That's fine as far as it goes, but if there is still the need to manually update the data used by the EFB, then the airline has missed a big opportunity for process change and cost savings.  To me, the real step change in benefits occurs when you move to the ability to electronically communicate the information on and off the aircraft.  This includes synchronizing data between aircraft and ground systems, and integrating into the various airline systems.  That's when you really start to see changes in the airline's business process.  And, once you’ve established that capability, it makes a lot of sense to broaden the functions you’re addressing—if you can synchronize performance calculation data, you can do the same for documents and manuals, crew information, techlog data, etc. Now suddenly you’ve got a broad platform that can be used to facilitate changes in a wide variety of processes.

What type of applications do EFBs cover?

A few airlines have moved on from separate, functionally narrow and standalone EFB applications to broader platforms that address several processes.  To me, the features of a successful EFB utilization would include solutions that address several functional areas and that are closely integrated as part of coherent platform, as well as communication on and off the aircraft and integration to ground systems.  The hardware is not the critical part of an EFB's effectiveness—a lot can be achieved with Class 1 hardware and either wireless phone cards or a manual method of synchronization off the aircraft (such as USB memory sticks, or docking the PC on the ground, particularly in the case where pilots are issued individual computers as opposed to equipment that stays on the aircraft).  However, a lot of airlines are finding for practical reasons that it makes sense to move to Class 2 hardware, which allows you to take advantage of the fact that it’s mounted on the aircraft.  For example, the use of a broadband connection through Gatelink (an 802.11b WiFi network at the airport gate) may be more practical if the hardware is Class 2 or higher.  In my opinion, it's difficult to justify the cost of Class 3 hardware in a business case for EFBs, particularly if you’re talking about retrofitting such hardware.  If you're getting new aircraft that come with Class 3 EFBs, that's obviously a different story—in that case the most important issue is that the airline selects a software platform that is broad and flexible enough to support both these new aircraft with installed Class 3 EFBS, and allow the same business process to apply to older aircraft they may want to retrofit with Class 1 or 2 equipment.

Are there common airline requirements for EFB solutions?

Yes, airlines do share many EFB requirements such as wanting a whole product instead of dealing with a host of separate issues for hardware, software or communications.  Airlines generally want to stick to their core business, which is operating the aircraft safely and efficiently.  They shouldn't have to become experts in IT systems integration, communications, synchronization, data security, and all the other issues that need to be addressed.  Most would prefer a "turnkey" solution, preferably one that's been proven already elsewhere.

There is a paradox, though, in that while most airlines want a solution that's proven, they also want one that adapts to their own processes rather than requiring them to change.  The way AMT has gone about addressing this need is by developing a core product, Flightman™, that is a framework to support various EFB applications, and includes the ability to modify forms and workflow that are specific to each airline, and change the look and feel for each operator without altering the underlying system.

Open data standards are another topic that airlines often feel strongly about.  No matter how good their relationship may be with a vendor or solution provider, they want to retain the ability to change partners at some point in the future.  Open data standards, such as XML, will allow them to do this.  Proprietary data that is specific to one solution provider will not.

If an airline is operating a mixed fleet of aircraft then the ability to support a common business process is essential.  I would also point out that "mixed fleet" doesn't just apply to operators who have both Airbus and Boeing aircraft-it could mean that you've got a mix of older and newer aircraft, of ones with OEM-fitted EFBs and without, or with or without various communications channels (ACARS,. SATCOM, Connexion by Boeing, etc.).

Finally, we find that the ability to remotely manage and configure the data on the aircraft is very important. By this I mean the ability to update and synchronize data, modify or add forms and workflow in an EFB, and even install an upgraded version of an application, all without having to physically visit the aircraft.  Several airlines have tried to implement EFB projects without this capability, and in many cases those projects have failed due to the practical issues of manually updating the EFBs.  By it's very nature, much of the required data is revised fairly frequently, and if you're required to run around to every airplane and install a CD every time something changes, that's obviously a much more difficult and cumbersome process than doing the data management centrally from a PC with a web browser interface.

How would you summarize the benefits of implementing EFB technology?

I would say that the main benefits to be derived are concentrated around the areas of reduced pilot duty time, reconciliation and management of fuel purchasing, real-time technical log and maintenance management, digital document distribution and the elimination of the dispatch function. These benefits will result in both cost savings and increased operational efficiency.

07-17-2005.

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