Simply the best

Sometimes we forget how lucky we are as 21st century general aviation pilots. Just a couple of decades ago, the flight planning process was enormously different. To a millennial pilot, the process would seem outrageously complex.

Although fresh PPL pilots still have to learn how to use a (non‑electronic) E6B flight computer (the ‘whiz wheel’), protractors, rulers and paper charts, these now archaic tools are usually stored after the flight test in favour of the electronic flight bag (EFB). Other practices of old, such as visits to a briefing office to chat to the Met officer and submit a paper flight plan, are now part of history.

There is little argument that the technological advances over the past few decades have simplified the flight planning process and reduced risk of error. It’s not just the EFB that has transformed flight planning; the information revolution more broadly has been the catalyst.

There are at least 6 ways that technology has made flight planning easier, with reflections from an air traffic controller and civil aviation historian, an aviation technologist and EFB developer, as well as a long‑time airline and GA pilot. But before that, it’s time to recall how things used to be for GA pilots in the ‘analogue’ world.

That era had no mobile phones, internet, data feeds or laptop computers. Pilots planning a flight needed – as they still do – weather reports and forecasts, charts, frequency information, aerodrome maps, fuel availability, airspace boundaries and NOTAMs. Nearly all this information had to be obtained from the briefing office, either in person or over the phone. Most flights required the submission of a comprehensive flight plan – this was submitted at the briefing office or by phone.

Phil Vabre is president of the Civil Aviation Historical Society (CAHS), a private pilot and has a background in human factors and safety management. He has a deep knowledge of how briefing offices worked, until they were made obsolete in the late 1980s.

The office was staffed by flight service officers and, at major airports, also by air traffic controllers and Bureau of Meteorology forecasters. Pilots had face-to-face briefings and the flight plan form was checked by officers. After briefing offices were phased out, a telephone briefing service continued. (And is still available, albeit from a central office.) The National Aeronautical Information Processing System (NAIPS) was introduced in 2000 and then developed into an internet service. Vabre says the advances in technology have made access to information a lot easier, especially for pilots who operated at an airport remote from a briefing office.

The flight plan form was a self‑carboning duplicate foolscap page, filled in by pen. As well as the details of every route segment, fuel calculations and SARTIME were included.

After the pilot left the briefing office, the plan couldn’t be easily changed, and there was limited capacity for updated information to be received.

In 1991, a new ATC system called the Australian Advanced Air Traffic System was introduced. Part of the implementation of this system was dropping the requirement for all VFR cross-country flights to have flight plans submitted.

Digital dividends

Now let’s examine the 6 ways that digital technology has drastically simplified flight planning.

1. Automated calculations

An experienced pilot of a certain age will be happy to claim that the E6B flight computer was easy-to-use and accurate. The reality is that, for inexperienced pilots, their use is error prone. When under stress, such as calculating a diversion, the chance of error increases.

Now, an EFB reduces workload and risk of error by automatically calculating drift, ground speed, magnetic variation, LSALT, last light, weight and balance, GMT, top of climb and top of descent, distance, heading, ground speed, ETIs and ETAs, and distance next, using grid point wind and temperature data feeds, aircraft performance data, GPS position and height data, and accelerometer input.

Shane Edwards is a retired domestic and international airline pilot, and now an active GA pilot. Although he still carries charts, his main navigation tool is an EFB. ‘The EFB has made it quicker to get the same thing done, but I enjoy planning a trip with a paper chart,’ he says.

Bevan Anderson is a Melbourne-based developer of an EFB product – AvPlan – and an active pilot. ‘The EFB does the more boring admin things quickly, so you can spend more time thinking about other aspects of planning, such as weather and loading,’ he says. ‘You can concentrate on flightcritical information instead of, say, calculating drift angle.’

2. GPS location

The location services of a GPS device provide accurate latitude and longitude, and height and direction information, which is more accurate than dead reckoning and triangulation. GPS data gives the pilot easy-to-interpret position information at any point in the flight.

Vabre says, ‘In my job pre-GPS, every second day a pilot would get lost – you never get that now.’ However, he highlights a downside. ‘Because everyone knows where they are all the time, VFR pilots get sucked into flying into conditions that aren’t VMC. You still have to make sensible decisions, the tech won’t do that for you.’

3. Online weather information

Without doubt, the electronic distribution of weather information is one of the most important changes in flight planning. Not only does NAIPS collect and collate bureau forecasts and observations into an easily digestible form, but bureau data feeds deliver real-time weather information to the pilot. Some data, such as weather radar information, can be overlaid on the digital charts in the EFB to make it very easy to interpret complex information. TAFs, METARs and other aviation weather information is instantly available through NAIPS, the EFB and other apps.

Edwards uses NAIPS to create a briefing. ‘It makes it easy to pump out the briefing, and then go through it to highlight the important things.’

Vabre recalls that the predecessor of the graphical area forecast (GAF) was the text-based ARFOR which required the pilot to interpret the code. He also points out the internet has made dissemination a lot easier for Airservices and the bureau.

Anderson agrees. ‘When the weather data is being fed into an EFB from the internet, the pilot can visualise the situation in a rich graphical format, which is so much easier than reading a bunch of text’.

4. Online flight notification

It’s easy to be nostalgic about the customer service provided in the days of the briefing office but the system was, by necessity, slow, expensive and inefficient, compared to online submissions. The ability to lodge an ICAO flight notification directly from a laptop or a tablet, with the information then distributed digitally to Airservices and CENSAR, is now a streamlined process. And the choice not to submit a flight notification is important, although this is not to say that pilots don’t need to plan flights!

Edwards is not nostalgic about those days, although he recalls that the briefing office staff at Essendon were always friendly and collegiate. But he is glad to leave behind briefings and flight plan submission by telephone. ‘[It was] cumbersome and laborious – payphone in one hand, pen in the other,’ he says. ‘Even finding a phone was sometimes hard. Glad those days are gone.’

Vabre says while NAIPS makes the process easy, there’s still a legal requirement to get a briefing.

5. Live route information

The ‘moving map’ interface on an EFB improves situational awareness for the pilot. This is sometimes referred to as ‘glanceable’ technology, as little brain processing is required to interpret the information. A dynamic, live, interactive chart would have been considered science fiction in the recent past, with the overlay of data including satellite imagery, weather cams, traffic (including ADS-B in), airspace, aerodrome wind indicators and area frequencies.

Edwards stresses how useful this is, especially under pressure and with a high workload.

Anderson says a key benefit is visualisation – seeing traffic as symbols on a map relative to your own position gives better situational awareness about what other aircraft are doing. Likewise, turning NOTAM information about restricted zones into red shaded areas, allows the pilot to visualise the airspace and plan to avoid it.

6. Smartphone communication

An internet-connected mobile phone is a hand-held computer, capable of methods of communication more sophisticated than just telephone calls. But even an in-flight call to ask about local conditions can be valuable. We realise the mobile phone is a ubiquitous and invaluable planning aid, with its capacity to send text messages, receive photos, make calculations, use apps and browse the web.

Edwards carries a spare phone with a SIM card on a different network. ‘It’s not just for an emergency, but for cases where I need to wireless hotspot when there’s no coverage on one network,’ he says.

Anderson says calling ahead for local knowledge, which might include phoning an ARO, can be important. ‘There’s also a number at the bottom of an area briefing that you can phone to speak to a real bureau forecaster,’ he says.

Vabre says that one of the ‘greatest things’ for him was when he loaded the bureau radar app onto his phone. ‘The phone is another tool to gather information in that context,’ he says. ‘The fundamental point is more information leads to better decisions.’

More information but less cognitive load

Having more information readily available isn’t always a good thing: too much information can generate cognitive overload. ‘If the minutiae goes away, you can focus on the bigger picture,’ Anderson says.

Pilots certainly have vastly larger amounts of information at their fingertips than they did a few decades ago. Interface designer Jon Yablonski, writing in Medium magazine, identified the factors of cognitive load as too many choices, too much thought required and lack of clarity. Even though Yablonski was writing about user interface design, his strategies for reducing load seem to carry through to the cockpit. These strategies include avoiding unnecessary elements, eliminating unnecessary tasks, and minimising decisions.

One of the strengths of electronic aids is they can filter out irrelevant information (such as by showing the area frequency for the aircraft’s current position and altitude), automate tasks (such as calculating headings and groundspeed) and minimise decisions (such as suggesting the runway to use). This is a continuing objective for Anderson. ‘The challenge for EFB providers will be giving timely access to just the information they need for the phase of flight and hiding the rest,’ he says.

Caveats and downsides

There are some downsides of technology too. Some devices offer so many features that they become complex to use, with the resultant risk of confusion. Limitations of the equipment, such as a tablet overheating and shutting down unexpectedly, are also a risk. Edwards says complacency and over-reliance can creep in.

Anderson stresses the importance of knowing your equipment. ‘Technology is no different to avionics. It can drag your attention away, so you need to learn how to use it correctly,’ he says. With power comes responsibility.

Beep boxes set the tone

There was once a time when the pilot had to rush around searching for a payphone at a remote airport to get a weather briefing. Many of the phone boxes found at aerodromes had ‘old’ rotary pulse-dialling phones. The automated briefing system required the ‘modern’ tone-dialling unit. This meant that one of the items in the diligent pilot’s flight bag was a ‘Code-a-Phone’, which emitted tones to imitate a push-button phone. For example, when asked to ‘Press 1 to Cancel’, the pilot would hold the Code-a-Phone up to the mouthpiece and press the number 1 key. In its day, this was ‘technology’.