EFB savings estimate

[ROW_BOT]

Does anyone out there have figures on the cost savings benefit of EFB operations for airlines?

I’m referring to savings such as;
Accurate Max Flexing for every takeoff, and subsequent stretching out of engine overhauls
Maximum RTOWs squeezed out of limiting runways
Savings in brake/tire wear by better pilot awareness of landing distances
Reduction of weight by reduction of library on board
Reduction of Admin/Library personnel
General safety benefits (hard to quantify)

I believe the cost reductions from all the above must be enormous, far off setting the cost of purchase and implementation of the system.

Anybody got the numbers?

[EMIT]

And those ENORMOUS benefits will be offset occasionally by a hull loss due to a simple typing error ...
Emirate s A340 in Melbourne, MK Cargo 747 in Halifax, and numerous close calls all over the world.

[EMIT]

Yes, muck-ups on paper happen as well, but there it is usually not as all encompassing as with an EFB: on an EFB one typo can influence both THRUST and SPEED results. With paper, the work is divided into steps, often leading to too low speeds, but correct amount of thrust, a less deadly situation.
Bottom line is proper training and discipline in procedures.
With a computer, often the result is blindly accepted, because computers are so much more precise than human beings with paper tables and graphs .....
The benefits may be presented as enormous by the guys wanting to sell the equipment, but the negative benefits are of course not highlighted by those salesmen.
Don’t get me wrong, I like EFB’s, but they are not a godsend.

[MCDU2]

We changed our engine deal a few years ago. Nobody bothered to tell the pilots though. Doesn't matter a toss about TOGA versus FLEX now for our maintenance costs. Make sure you understand fully what deals your airline has signed up for before wasting any time on an analysis.

[compressor stall]

Yes mistakes happen but there’s a reason why the manufacturers say calcs must be done independently of each other and compared at the end.

That is IMHO reducing finger trouble error likelihood back to the level of paper charts.

[pineteam]

EFB is super safe and pretty much bulletproof against entry errors as long as both crew members are doing the computation on their own IPAD and crosschecking that they have the same stop margin.

[FlightDetent]

Google the Qatari incident on the West Coast, or Halifax accident. (Tough your procedure is sound to trap certain frequented errors).

ROW_BOT slide 10 of the attachment.

[booze]

Independent calculations on both sides then crosschecking according to company SOP picked up finger troubles all the time since i've been using EFBs. On the RTOW charts subject, however things weren't so simple, if my memory serves me well: at a certain operator in my career, FOs were doing the calc. and both pilots bugging their relevant ASIs, CPT setting TO power based on the above mentioned calc. done by the FO only. Plenty of room for error...still got away with it and so did the operator well before and after my time spent there.

[Piltdown Man]

With the exception of weight and speed and cost of updates most of the savings are on Powerpoint slides. But even with the latter, the savings are still worth having and may well justify implementation. For example, my company no longer needs the support previously offered by huge teams of people in various departments just to keep the aircraft document libraries updated. But like every new system, it comes with its own new set of traps. Some of them are obvious and some less so.

Simply put, I don’t think there is a bug free suite of software anywhere in the world. This means new defences have to be created. Cross-checking should deal with some finger troubles, but not all. What is really needed is a cleverer system of the old fashioned “wet finger in the air” to deal with not only finger trouble but some of the rather nasty bugs that live in our EFB’s.

PM