Finzolas
12th May 2009, 16:27
Hi to all,
I work for a charter operator based in France.
We operate 17 B737.
We operate flights all over Europe and North Africa. (Iceland, Russia, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Madera are our farther destinations)
On board of our cockpits, we currently have 2 complete sets of the Jeppesen ERM coverage for navigation and terminal chart coverage. Plus 1 set of the EEU (Eastern Europe) documentation.
This represents a large amount of work to keep it update, of money for the revision service from Jeppesen and of space in the B737 cockpit.
Regarding our FMC airport DB, we have all the Arpt with runways longer than 5000 ft included in the area described above.
The advantage of the current paper documentation available on board is that it matches the FMC DB (and also includes useless airport like too short runways...)
To solve the cockpit space issue, we could go for a tailored paper solution.
But, the problem I face is that a tailored paper documentation is far more expensive than the standard coverage... even if we limit the number of Arpt (then the available documentation on board does not match anymore the FMC DB).
And it requires approximately the same human resource to keep it up-to-date.
Well, so we start thinking about an electronic solution: EFB Class II.
I though electronic tailored solution for terminal charts would be far less expensive than paper... but it is absolutely not the case.
Even if we limit the coverage to the scheduled airport of our network (around 300 different arpt over the past 3 years), associated budget is 4 or 5 times above the current budget… and then charts DB does not match FMC db (what a surprise when you divert and notice that charts are not available… gloups).
Well, I assume all operators have this issue, even if regular operations are easier to handle.
I would really appreciate if you could share your experience on this matter, especially Class II/III EFB operators (what coverage do you use?).
Thanks,
Fin
I work for a charter operator based in France.
We operate 17 B737.
We operate flights all over Europe and North Africa. (Iceland, Russia, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Madera are our farther destinations)
On board of our cockpits, we currently have 2 complete sets of the Jeppesen ERM coverage for navigation and terminal chart coverage. Plus 1 set of the EEU (Eastern Europe) documentation.
This represents a large amount of work to keep it update, of money for the revision service from Jeppesen and of space in the B737 cockpit.
Regarding our FMC airport DB, we have all the Arpt with runways longer than 5000 ft included in the area described above.
The advantage of the current paper documentation available on board is that it matches the FMC DB (and also includes useless airport like too short runways...)
To solve the cockpit space issue, we could go for a tailored paper solution.
But, the problem I face is that a tailored paper documentation is far more expensive than the standard coverage... even if we limit the number of Arpt (then the available documentation on board does not match anymore the FMC DB).
And it requires approximately the same human resource to keep it up-to-date.
Well, so we start thinking about an electronic solution: EFB Class II.
I though electronic tailored solution for terminal charts would be far less expensive than paper... but it is absolutely not the case.
Even if we limit the coverage to the scheduled airport of our network (around 300 different arpt over the past 3 years), associated budget is 4 or 5 times above the current budget… and then charts DB does not match FMC db (what a surprise when you divert and notice that charts are not available… gloups).
Well, I assume all operators have this issue, even if regular operations are easier to handle.
I would really appreciate if you could share your experience on this matter, especially Class II/III EFB operators (what coverage do you use?).
Thanks,
Fin