An ipad EFB Project at SmartLynx Airlines

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY: SMART LYNX An ipad EFB Project at SmartLynx Airlines Steinar Sveinsson, EFB Project Manager, SmartLynx Airlines and Jens Pisarski, COO, International Flight Suort outline the successful ipad EFB roject at SmartLynx AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 24

2 CASE STUDY: SMART LYNX In this article, we re will look at one of the key toics of the day, connected systems. We ll do this by sharing SmartLynx s exerience connecting all of their systems through their EFB solution. But before that, some background information on SmartLynx to set the scene. SMARTLYNX As at the time of writing, SmartLynx s fleet included 13 aircraft on two AOCs (Air Oerator s Certificates) in Latvia and in Estonia. The Latvia fleet has 7 A320 and 1 A321 aircraft with a further 5 A320s based in Estonia. The Latvian fleet obtained EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) aroval in Setember 2014 and ETL (Electronic Tech Log) aroval in August 2017 while, in Estonia, the EFB aroval came in January 2015 and the ETL was also aroved in August The two arts of the airline oerate together for training, including training ilots on the A320. Three further aircraft will be added to the fleet during 2018, bringing it u to 16. SmartLynx is an ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) service rovider with an imressive customer community. The oeration comlies with EASA AIR-OPS-1 and IOSA (IATA Oerational Safety Audit) as well as being EASA Part 145 aroved. Cometences include ad hoc wet lease, long-term wet lease and full charter oerations. SmartLynx offers Cabin Crew conversion training, can issue CC (Cabin Crew) attestation and holds dangerous goods, low visibility on take-off and CAT2, CAT3A landing arovals. It also flies an extensive route system on its own account (own flight numbers) as the ma (figure 1) illustrates and if all the flights undertaken for other airlines are included, it can be seen in figure 2 that SmartLynx aircraft and crew fly over most of Euroe and some of the Middle East lus a Vietnam oerations not on this ma. Smartlynx Area of Oeration 2016 International Flight Suort, the main subject for this article. The Airline Management System is Aviolinx RAIDO while Air Suort PPS is the Flight Planning System, Navblue monitors erformance and charts are Jeesen Je FD-Pro. HubMobile suorts the Document Library and Conduce etechlog8 is the electronic techlog (ETL). The maintenance system is Commsoft OASES, MINT is the Training management system and AeroCloud is used for cosmic radiation calculations. SMARTLYNX S EFB But it isn t so much about the several systems in the EFB suite themselves as how they are connected that contributes to the EFB s effectiveness (figure 3) Connectedness EFB data flow chart. IFS - PFB Paerless Flight Bag MEL Item OASES to Iad Navtech Performance FIGURE 1 Vietnam Oeration missing from this ma. FIGURE 2 SYSTEMS USED BY SMARTLYNX Like all airlines, SmartLynx has a range of systems to deal with various asects of the business. The EFB at SmartLynx is the Paerless Flight Bag from IFS, FIGURE 3 The IFS Paerless Flight Bag is an integrated and fully interfaced EFB latform solution which delivers the software for the aircraft with one or multile modules as well as the ground based Back-Office system with integrations to multile systems such as Maintenance, Flight Planning, Performance, Scheduling, etc. With the database, the EFB can manage all data flows into and out of the EFB system a controlled environment in which the user can suort the airline with any needs they have from the ground or in the aircraft. Some of the AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 25

3 CASE STUDY: SMART LYNX udated and from there it will give the ilot the latest information. Hub Mobile (a stand-alone a) is the document library where the manuals are ket. All of this is ushed to the ipad from where the data goes back to the Maintenance Control System and from there back into the EFB system as status information. MEL items These MEL items warrant a closer look (figure 5). MEL items Oases PFB - ipad RAIDO Oases. Interface feeding flight schedule (OASES = Maintenance System) Oases - PFB Pilot ipad. Interface feeding MEL items MEL Item OASES to Iad modules available in the Paerless Flight Bag can be seen in figure 4. Flight Planning & Load Systems Take-Off Performance Integration to Service Vendor ios or Win 8/10 Scheduling & Crew Planning Systems IFS PFB Back-Office Platform Maintenance Systems Flight Data ereorts 3rd Party Document CMS/Edit Systems (data + reort formats) ECTM + SMS Systems Engine Systems FIGURE 4 As an integrator, IFS with its Paerless Flight Bag does not rovide any of the back-end system services but imorts and integrates all data from/ between artner systems and fills it into the work flow on the EFB. Looking at the solution imlemented at SmartLynx, the information is ushed to the ilot s ipad through the interface that feeds the systems with data from IFS. From there, the Jeesen Charts system auto-loads dearture, destination and alternate airorts, and lots a route using the EFB; this is a feature that ilots articularly like. Also, Navblue works as the online erformance calculator. The maintenance Control System is OASES which also has online access to oen MEL (Minimum Equiment List) items. Before SmartLynx got an etechlog, the status of MEL items were just as ut into the Maintenance Control System but, with the etechlog online, OASES is immediately AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 26 FIGURE 5 RAIDO feeds flight schedules to OASES from where it goes to the ilots ipads. The ilot has simly to ress the Aircraft Status which will show him the latest status for MEL items. Charts There is a button on the dislay which, when ressed, will deliver the charts (figure 6) for the dearture and destination to the ilot, from which he can lot the route.

4 CASE STUDY: SMART LYNX IFS - PFB JeFD-Pro Interface Press button. Jeesen auto load from PFB to Jeesen (JeFD-Pro) Prearing charts for dearture, destination, alternate airort and lotting lanned route flown. FIGURE 6 Crew information and General Declaration The interface is used to feed flight deck crew information from RAIDO to PPS Flight Log, including Pilot in Command (PIC), First Officer (FO) and Additional Crew Member (ACM). It s managed through the Os system where crew lanning is undertaken. The PFB EFB matches the flight with data from the Os system to check if there is a match with crew information (the crew is already shown on the EFB). That is useful for the ilot because he ll see the crew s full names with their three letter codes. This connection led to another because, with a full name and a three letter code, a connection can be made to create a General Declaration (GenDec). The standard rocedure is for the crewing deartment to create a GenDec and send it somewhere to be rinted but once in a while, you end u in a lace, esecially in an oeration like SmartLynx, where there is a GenDec missing. So SmartLynx had IFS build them a button for GenDec which, when ushed, will AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 27 re-oulate the General Declaration form, connect to the Os system, grab the data (name, date of birth, assort number ) from all crew members available in the crewing deartment and ut that information on the GenDec form so that the ilot can send to wherever is convenient to have it rinted; it s a nice back-u rocedure. Load Sheet On all flights, the load sheet is reared by the ilot; it s not connected to DCS (Data Coding Scheme) systems in the airort because SmartLynx flies for so many customers that it s never worth the effort to set the ulink to a DCS system. The ilot creates the load sheet on the EFB which is fully OFF-line caable and which takes seconds. He signs it and the load sheet goes to a re-defined list in the back-office so, when they re dearting from one

5 CASE STUDY: AIRLINE COMPANY NAME The ilot creates the load sheet on the EFB which is fully OFF-line caable and which takes seconds. He signs it and the load sheet goes to a re-defined list in the back-office so, when they re dearting from one lace, it is sent to wherever the customer wants lace, it is sent to wherever the customer wants in a really easy rocess. But then we got a requirement from one customer that they wanted to have a tye B message sent to their Os system because their Os system wasn t reading the or the coy of the load sheet itself and they, of course, wanted the numbers into their Os system. So SmartLynx asked IFS to add the LDM (Load Distribution Message) format to the bottom of the load sheet itself but then had to work out how it could be taken from there and dislayed as a tye B message. The way this was resolved, SmartLynx asked IFS to ull the load message itself after it has been signed by the ilot and dro it into the airline s database. Once there, it is rocessed using a Pentaho transformation engine to a Connector+ from ARINC that can send tye B messages; so the load sheet is droed into the Connector+ Outbox where there is the oortunity to define a call sign and destination. It works well and, at SmartLynx, everything concerning the load sheet is done on the ipad. The ilot comletes the load sheet, signs it, a coy is sent to the handling agent and a tye B message is sent to whoever wants to receive it. In the final ste for the load sheet, the rocess has to coy generated LDM files for ARINC using the ehub Connector+ from ARINC. From there, it is an automatic rocess using whatever settings have been loaded to the system. Back end ortal The back-end ortal in the IFS solution is also its strength. The focus is usually on what the ilot is doing from the Os side and, from the comany side, users are very interested to use the data that comes after a flight has comleted. So, again SmartLynx aroached IFS to make it easier to rocess the data. Now, there is an excellent back-end ortal with all the data from which a user can select what they want, download it as a CSV file and then rocess it. SmartLynx is currently working with IFS to develo a reort generator so the back-end ortal digital data can be analyzed to detect areas on which the airline can take action and imrove rocesses. The reort generator lets the system administrator create any rule using digital data from the ortal. Also, warnings and notifications can be ed based on the rule: if someone is overtankering, utting on too much fuel, they can be notified; equally, if the landing/arrival fuel is less than it should be, an to that effect can be sent to the disatcher and to the civil aviation authority (mandatory) so that someone can check why that has haened. The imortant thing is that the tool allows users to take immediate action. Post-flight reort When the ost-flight reort has been signed, data from the flight is made available on the back-end ortal. SmartLynx then sends the ost-flight reort to the customer with a full Journey Log, a coy of the load sheet and a icture of the fuel sli. Before this all became oerational, s were used for this job, coying in a lot of eole which led to s bouncing back and forth trying to find one fuel sli. Now that doesn t haen because as soon as the AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 28 ost-flight reort is signed, everybody gets a coy of everything. Digital data SmartLynx grabs any digital data that can be taken and rocessed into information. For instance, navigation fees are calculated by the flight lanning system, PPS from Air Suort, which used to generate a rinted reort that the airline has used to challenge the navigation fee invoices from Eurocontrol. Now, finalizing the ste, we are in a rearation rocess that will enable information to be automatically sent from PPS to the EFB, rocessed to SharePoint from where it goes directly to Ax/adata to challenge invoices and into the Os system where it will be used to forecast estimated navigation costs. With ost flight data, the data goes from the EFB server into RAIDO which is then locked for editing. SmartLynx considers the data as defined by the ilot to be the Master Data: as soon as he has signed it, it will go into the Os systems and is locked so that all the duty times (figure 7) calculations become the actual data. Also available is the load information, fuel (figure 8), and take-off and landing ilots, to ensure that ilots comlete their required number of take-offs and landings and to hel manage ilot rotations. FIGURE 7

6 CASE STUDY: AIRLINE COMPANY NAME HYX472 MY>C4n (YUCK 320 Y180) 0..,.-tur : lll.a14may1709:28 < (HE.B 14MAY1709:4S} ArrO: ;!l,jl-4hay1712:58 < (;!!.,!14MAY1713:00) f I Fuel, I I En Route Catenng Message Fuel fuc iet I Fl.Ml R cot"ds Load Tye..,,.....,,... V e V e._... Vot MJ Reort VoyMJ FuelAmval H.ldlurn Fuo!Onboa, f.1mlt«lill'lc c:.onsumtion Tab Off Fu:;--i D fml /ml Qua2' ,000) /ml /ml l.t1fml o.- Fu.I Tye D ID ID Load Tye I Unknown I I Fuel unknown I 0.nsity lkg/m3 I Qu.antity >n FIGURE 8 etechlog8 The etechlog8 from Conduce is the latest aroval for SmartLynx: the goal is for SmartLynx to only have a single entry of data for the ilot to minimize the risk of tying mistakes. When the flight is comleted and the ost-flight reort has been signed on the ilot s PFB EFB, there is an interface from the EFB to the Conduce server so that, when the ost flight reort has been signed, the ilot will be able to refresh the etechlog and re-oulate all the data that has been generated from the flight into the etechlog. OTHER SYSTEMS In addition to the above, SmartLynx uses several other systems, all referred to above, including Aviolinx RAIDO, Airline Management System, Air Suort PPS Flight Planning System, MINT Training management System and Aerocloud for Cosmic Radiation reorting. The interface from RAIDO to PPS flight lanning deals with the roblem of flight call-sign similarities among aircraft oerating in the same area on the same ATO (Air Traffic Organization) frequency giving rise to otential and actual flight safety there is an interface from Aerocloud to RAIDO that will redict the cosmic radiation dose for every flight. When the measured value is available ostflight, the file is udated with that actual dose. Crew members have access to these figures through their crew ortal incidents; the danger of an aircraft taking and acting on a clearance intended for another due to call sign confusion is a common occurrence. So SmartLynx has its flight numbers fed into the flight lanning system and linked to the aroriate call signs and the rocess is reversed in the Os system where a call sign list is linked to the aroriate flight numbers to check for consistency and accuracy. Cosmic radiation SmartLynx did not wish to base calculations on a city air but rather on an actual route flown. So the AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 29 flight lans are fed to Aerocloud and PCAire who run it through their engine; there is an interface from Aerocloud to RAIDO that will redict the cosmic radiation dose for every flight. When the measured value is available ost-flight, the file is udated with that actual dose. Crew members have access to these figures through their crew ortal along with redicted doses for future flights. The effective dose should not exceed 50 millisievert (msv) in any single year. (1 msv = 1000 microsievert (usv). A warning aears in the rostering system if any of the following limits is exceeded:

7 CASE STUDY: SMART LYNX 20 msv ( usv) the average maximum dose in 1 year (soft rule); 50 msv ( usv) the maximum dose in 1 year; 100 msv ( usv) the maximum dose in 5 years. All of Smart Lynx s training is logged into Mint to determine that crews are legal (or not legal) to fly based on the most limiting exiry date which is exorted to the Os system. The status is then made available for the crew to see what they need to know: FCL (Flight Crew License) MED (Medical License) ENG (English) PPO (Passort) LC32 (Line check) FC (Master Qualification) CC (Master Qualification) There is an interchange of information between the Os system and the training management system so that the crew trainer knows if the crew member is off ill or on vacation. There is also an on-line access for SmartLynx to Sofia Flight Training web ortal and, when the SmartLynx Training Coordinator books the SIM (Simulator) and manually enters it into the Training Management system, which can automatically assign the training. AIRPORT CATEGORIZATION This is something with which SmartLynx is very leased because nobody can fly to an airort unless it s Airort categorized. SmartLynx devised a system whereby, if an airort is ut into the Os system it is checked against a list of airorts that are already aroved and, if the airort is not aroved, an warning will be sent to the erson resonsible for categorizing all the airorts to which Smart Lynx aircraft fly asking him to categorize that airort and add it to the authorized list. For the ilot, if he is allocated to a flight that he has not flown for the last year, the system will detect that and send him a link with a briefing of the airort category. He will comlete the briefing and, if it s yes then he s authorized to fly there but, if it s no, he will not be able to fly there. If he does that flight within every 12 month eriod he will not have to go through the rocedure again. MASTER DATA FLOW The flow chart (figure 9) shows the system and the key function that the Paerless Flight Bag occuies in the system. SmartLynx Master Data Flow Chart FIGURE 9 This then is the successful EFB imlementation that has added value to the whole SmartLynx software and data environment by roviding a central oint around which a great deal of what the airline does on the oerations side can be linked. We hoe it has roved of use for readers to see how this system has worked. INTERACTIVE GIVE US YOUR OPINION CLICK HERE TO POST YOUR COMMENT INTERACTIVE SUBSCRIBE HERE CLICK HERE TO READ ALL FUTURE EDITIONS AIRCRAFT IT Oerations MARCH-APRIL 2018 PAGE 30 STEINAR SVEINSSON Steinar has 33 year work exerience from Icelandair as Duty Manager Flight disatch, later as Manager Oerations Control and Chief Instructor FOO. He s a busy man now as EFB Imlementation Manager for BluebirdCargo, Oerations Consultant for Smartlynx Airlines and, now, flight disatch for AirIcelandConnect along with consultant work for other airlines. JENS PISARSKI Jens Pisarski has an Academy Economist degree from the Danish Aarhus School of International Business and has worked the last 23 years within the flight oerations software industry, including on establishing Danish flight lanning software rovider AIR SUPPORT PPS flight lanning rovider. The Last 5 years Jens has been COO and Partner of IFS, the comany behind the Paerless Flight Bag software solution. SMARTLYNX AIRLINES SmartLynx Airlines secializes in full-service ACMI (Aircraft- Crew-Maintenance-Insurance). The airline also has a full charter oeration for its home markets in Latvia and Estonia. It also erforms flight crew training SmartLynx ATO is a leading aroved airline ilot training comany in the Baltic States roviding tye rating courses for Airbus A320 series. IFS INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT SUPPORT International Flight Suort is a Coenhagen based EFB software technology and solution sulier, secializing since 2001 in Electronic Flight Bag software solutions for Stowable, Stowable+Viewable and Mounted EFB hardware classes covering Tye A-B as well as Tye C software classes. International Flight Suort is the creator of the Paerless Flight Bag owered by IFS flexible software latform and Back-Office solutions which is available for Windows 8/10 as well as for ios tablets.

8 Paerless Flight Bag The EFB software solution shaed by AIRLINES for AIRLINES For ipad and Windows EFB Units Full range of Software Module tyes Fully customized Workflows Fully customized Modules and Reorts Full Flexibility, Agility and Scalability About The future of flying is all about customization and increasing efficiency constantly. We target individual commercial airline needs with Paerless Flight Bag modules, customized in beautiful functional design, easily adated on IPADs and Windows Tablets. Exerienced exerts make integration into backend airline systems flawless. Our research and develoment team is always exloring new ways to otimize user exerience, efficiency gains and automated data handling. After all - only the sky is the limit when you fly with Paerless Flight Bag solutions from IFS. For more information and references, lease contact: Our sales team at IFS International Flight Suort, has been a leading force in commercial aviation software systems for over two decades. We understand your journey and what it takes to go from a traditional aer based or a based solution to a fully integrated and aerless EFB latform solution. We have worked with many commercial airlines always fulfilling the needs and customization requirements that every customer exects. International Flight Suort AS Coenhagen Airort Business Center Petersdalvej 1A, DK-2770 Kastru Denmark sales@ifs.aero Comany direct: Sales direct: