I’ve been implementing information systems in the aerospace industry for the past 12 years and one common problem that still hasn’t been fully addressed in that time is how to get vital aircraft utilisation data back to base.

A bit of background
Aircraft are required to be maintained to very high standards and regulations.*  These standards require that maintenance is carried out at set intervals, a bit like cars being serviced annually or at set mileage.  Unlike cars, aircraft maintenance is forecast on flying hours and has to be done in order for the aircraft to fly legally.  In order to be able to monitor flying hours and when maintenance is due, the aircraft needs a Flight Log which is simply a record of the aircraft flights and is completed by the pilot.  It includes various data about the flight (take off time, landing time, cycles, landings, pilot details etc).  In addition, the Flight Log is used to monitor fuel uplifts, defects that the aircraft may have and all the legal documents.  Generally all of this together is known as a TechLog and for the best part of the past 100 years this has been done on paper, usually on pre-printed stationary as per this example.



Usually there are 3 carbon copies of an individual TechLog page: one stays with the aircraft, one stays at the last flight destination and one is sent back to base for processing the data.  What is done with that data is a whole other story – but it is the process of getting that data back to base that I am concerned with here.  If you can get that data back to base as quickly as possible, the better and smoother the maintenance organisation can operate.

Current Transmittal Methods
In days of yore TechLog pages would have been sent by post if the aircraft was due to be away from base for any length of time.  As a worst case scenario, you would simply have to wait for the aircraft to return to base for the Tech Records clerk to retrieve their copy direct from the cockpit. The advent of the Telex and the Fax meant that the pages from the TechLog could be sent quickly and cheaply back to base.  Believe it or not, but that is how things have stayed since.  I don’t have any stats on it, but I’m pretty certain that the fax machine is the world’s favourite way of getting TechLog data back to base.  Obviously maintenance organisations frustrated with the inertia of the technology have experimented with elaborate phone and answering procedures, scanning, emailing and remote connectivity in an effort to consign the fax machine to the bin.  All of which have their own inherent problems.

Since the technology has been available aircraft manufacturers, operators and software developers have been dabbling with the idea of an Electronic TechLog or eTechLog (a term I despise**).  The concept of the eTechLog where the paper tech log entry is 100% replaced is strewn with problems.  First you have the task of fitting or retro-fitting the necessary equipment into the cockpit.  You can’t just go down to PC World, pick up a laptop and plug it into a spare socket in the aircraft – for one thing they don’t tend to have spare sockets in cockpits.  It is a major undertaking to go through the design approval for fitting the necessary equipment onto an aeroplane.  Secondly the processes, procedures and actual software need to be bullet proof to get the authorities to sign off the approval for your system. And thirdly any industry wide process that hasn’t changed by much in the past 100 years is always going to be a challenge to implement.  As a result of all this, relatively very few aircraft today use an eTechLog.

Where does mytechlog.net fit into all this?
We believe that it is in everyone’s interest to get TechLog pages back to base as quickly and simply as possible.  We all want safer aircraft, right?  We don’t have a problem with people using an eTechLog. They’re a great solution and are definitely the way everyone will be doing it in a generation’s time – but not everyone can invest in the millions required to equip their aircraft with the necessary kit.  There’s got to be an easier way.  Our concept has been to not try and enter the eTechLog market, but to rival the fax machine as the best way to get TechLog pages back to base.  We think that if you can build a web app that is simple to use and does the fundamental job of getting the really essential airworthiness data from A to B, then people will find that really useful.  My colleagues at Conduce who are not au-fait with the aerospace industry were flabbergasted when we quoted for an electronic fax system for an airworthiness management client!!
So watch out Fax machine manufacturers – we have your product firmly in our sights......

*Credit to the nice folks at A2BAero for sanity checking our regulatory accuracy here.

**Question: When cookers moved from burning fossil fuels to using an electric induction coil why weren’t they were called eCookers? When Iceboxes became the fridges, why were they not called eIceBoxes? When the light bulb was invented why wasn’t it called the eCandle?  
Answer: Because it’s lame!!