Improving Jeppesen Products
 

Hello All,

I wanted to find out from some currently serving and indeed retired military aircrew who have used or are familiar with Jeppesen products how you think they could be improved and in what direction you would like to see them going.

I ask this because it is very evident that the only people who could possibly advise an Aeronautical Information provider are those men and women who have actually had to use these products in anger.

Thank you for any positive or negative (but hopefully contructive) criticism.

Other than the reticence of my fellow Jeppy users to allow a change to the format of a jetplan to anything resembling a logical and clear layout I have no complaints, and that one could hardly be levelled at Jeppy themselves, more the lack of flexibility of many who work at Waddo.

ex-RAF truckie, now been in the UK civil industry for 14 years - 3 Airlines - and used the full gamut of charts, but now using Jeppy.

First of all, pilots like what they know and you have to bear that in mind when reading/hearing pilots' comments. What do I think? Basically, the Jepps have the most information on their App Charts, but even after 6 years I sometimes find it hard to find it ie they are cluttered. Eg the little round 'ballnotes' - it is sometimes hard to find the decode. Why is the descent slope info in %? Why are they not in colour - I gather this is coming? Not always info on DATIS of the ACARS variety.

Aerad - or whatever they are called this week - seem much clearer and better laid out. Try finding your way around CDG on the Jepp plates - and the paper is so thin that it quickly deteriorates/tears.

These are just a few of my views which I do not expect everyone to agree with - but you did ask!

Regards
mcdhu

Jeppesen en route charts need COLORS. The forever, dull blue graphics are cheap and pathetic, ok only for people who are color blind. :eek:

Too cluttered, print too small to read in poor light, no use of colour, no need for CAT II/III minima on the approach plate.

The numbered footnotes "balls" that you can never find the decode of..
They do not quote runway slope.

I generally like the jeppesen, but for the non precision approach they are still in the 50s with a dive and fly kind of approach when all the world is making costant descent to mda and then go around well before map.
I think they should improve a lot on this side, specially in not possible that often there's no reference in terms of distance to (rwy, dme, or whatever) to the descent profile.

Use the enroute Jepps as fire lighters. Use the SID/STAR and Transition charts as props for wobbly tables. Make the approach charts like Aerad (Thales or whatever...) and don't use the taxi charts. Problem solved.

PM


Basically, the buggers are too complicated, poorly laid out and printed on too thin paper.

Lido
 

Who has moved over to LH Systems LIDO?

There paper charts are good.. However looking at the EFB in LH its way better than the Jeppesen flightdeck.

Wish my mob would get it!

Does anyone know if LIDO have their own version of ICHARTs like Jeppesen?

www.jeppesen.com/icharts

PT6A

I concur with what has been said here already. here. I have to use Jepps and the way to make them better would be to get rid of some of the clutter - and make them look like AERADs.

As ex RAF, I grew up with the 1 AIDU/AERAD format, so I'm probably biased. But of all the various type I have used in my career, AERADs are the clearest and easiest.

And some of the Jepps updating is a bit tardy.

PT6A
 

Be careful what you wish for.

Emirates went 100% Lido a few years ago including eRoute EFB.

Enroute charts in Lido are German centric (which is good for one airline).
Requiring two separate plates for a SID? WTF?
Missing frequencies, text is a dog's dinner...

A lot of us miss Jepp.

halas

HamsterLegs:
I flew with Jepp charts my entire airline carrier. I now work with their charts on an almost daily basis in my consulting work. I have seen them improve over the years. They do the overall best of any chart-maker in my professional opinion.

Some charts are, of course, cluttered. That is of the state of origin's making; not Jeppesen.

@PT6A, we used to use tailored jepp airport booklets, very comfortable way to fly, however very expensive when your route network expands. Then moved over to EAG paper charts. Absolutely horrible, bad presentation, missing information, no colour usage, nearly no terrain info.

Now we're using the LIDO eRoute manual on our EFB (no paper chart on the flightdeck anymore), including automatic insertion of the route into all enroute charts. So far we're pretty pleased with them, for a quick overview the AFC is great, we haven't had any missing information yet, uses colour including switching to night mode for better readability during hours of darkness, nice presentation overall and easy to read. At home or in the office we do have access to both a company tailored and the complete worldwide online route manual, pretty much the same as that link from Jepp you posted i guess. Two different plates for a SID is something i've only seen for those italian airports that have a SID followed by a transition.

You might find that's due to the state of origin rather than Jeppesen. The Jepp charts produced for Australia have constant descent angle approaches shown for NPAs and have for a number of years.

iPad
 

for the past 2 weeks I am a proud owner of an iPad (yeahhhh) and i must say that it could be the best possible hardware for an EFB.

In my view Jeppesen is about 1O years behind todazs technology. The layout of jeppview is old and they dont oven seem to be too keen of tech development. Which is sad given the fact that now we have to ultra large tablets in the cockpit which partly thanks to microsoft can actually start up in less then 4 minutes. :(

so there seems to be some room to improve.

G

Print them on A4 so that we can read them without a magnifying glass. They're still better than the electronic version in the A380 though....

mrdeux:
Jepp charts printed from Jeppview on a color laserjet printer on legal paper are awesome.

:D

I'm glad to hear your are not printing them on illegal paper! :ok:

Prefer A4 myself! :)

Mr.Bernoulli:
We can't get A4 over here in the colonies. :)

In any case, what our legal system forces us to call "legal size" at 8.5 x 14 inches works better than your A4 for Jepp approach charts. Even Granny can read them on legal stock. (The small drawback is you can't see the instrument panel while you are reading the lawful-size chart.)
:}