ideas welcome

[alpha_777]

If anyone have any serious ideas on how they see the development of flight deck documentation on civil airliners to support the aircrew as computer-assistance concepts mature, i'd much appreciate any comments.
Cheers!!!

[m&v]

Some Carriers are going to'complete'absence of paper.All through the concept of'laptops'producing 'charts' for the approach.Log book data being retrieved after the flights/Data link capture of aircraft condition etc,flight logging(how go zit?)

[mkaram]

Hi,

I do not work in aviation but I am a profesionnal designer and an aviation amateur as well.
The idea of replacing paper by electronic data is nothing new in fact not only in aviation but in many domains where learning should be done as fast as possible and in an effecient way. We all know that memorizing is something that human being can aquire through his life when it comes to events habits etc or through a metodological sessions when it comes to "knowlege data" if you like. Memorizing is very easy when it is spread along a lifetime but very difficult when it is done in a small amount of time. The human brain will then store a massive amount of information in a small lapse of time therefore requiring alot of effort and making the person become tired and saturated and that might lead to blank spots in memory, spaciness etc...
Interactivity came lately with technology and was a big help for many professional fields not only aviation; virtual reality proved that it can bring the human brain to store information by simply becoming an actor on the data he should memorize. Flight Simulators are an exemple.
So Interactivity can be explained as action and reaction method of meorizing and learning...
If we come back to the flight operation manuals this same theory can applied to an electronic format of these manuals.
I suppose having a portable "palm pilot" like machine that can be pluged to the aircraft systems in the fligh deck and then unpluged and transported with the pilots. This electronic book can be updated with information, graphics following udpates and modifications on the aircraft. The functionality of this manual when pluged to the system is to be able to refer to any section by a key press from the operator when a problem is encountered. being linked to the computer it will read and anaylse the problem in the aircraft and display to the pilot the exact section (not page but section of the manual) on it's screen and highlight the necessary actions to be done or the probable causes of the failure. The usability of this small machine will not stop here, I immagine after each flihgt it will save the flight events data and pilots can retransfer them to their airline operations computers and the airlines can save them to train new pilots. These data can be also combined together to create events in a flight and linked to flight simulators for scenarios replication etc...Teh same saved data of any failure can be handed to maintenance techniciens and engineers so they can learn more abuot the mechanical behavior of the aircraft and the chain reaction of any failure and its direct results. Also the saved data can be archieved by the flight safety organisation(s) for future investigations and to put the light on past ones. Instead of waiting to the doomed data recorders (black boxes) to be discovered after each catastrophy, this electronic interactive flight manual can play the same role but after any flight with minor incidents. The role and functionality of this electronic manual can be without limitation, you know more then I do that modern cockpits have electronic checklists and memo and the electronic manual can be a complementary transportable machine that has the same fucntionality and effeciency.
I think for professions like arilines pilot, computers are a great help and I think that while modern aircraft are equiped with computers their operation manuals can also be computerized for the simple reason that both can talk and interact together.(aircraft systems and operation manuals)
refering to paper while computers are the main work tools is somehow a shift in human brain lurning curve and probably a small waste of time to let the brain tansfer from fast interactive process to traditional books and papers manuals formats and to find the exact page and spot and make the necessary reading and analyse.

Cheers