John Ewing of Aviation Mentor has searched long and hard for a satisfactory Electronic Flight Bag. In fact, he has about 17 posts (and counting) on the subject. However, John has recently written two posts (iPad: First Impressions and The iPad EFB: One Week of Use) about the new iPad as an electronic flight bag. He also considered several iPad or iPhone applications (ForeFlight Mobile 3, Skycharts Pro and GoodReader) plus he addressed the issue of screen readability and the usability of the iPad itself.
According to John’s reviews, the iPad screen is very readable in the cockpit plus there are a couple of important iPod related aviation applications that are already available for the iPad. However, John did mention some limitations – namely mounting one and using it in the cockpit plus having no satisfactory way of writing with with one and not support Dvorak keyboard mapping.
Nevertheless, John concluded that in spite of some problems and limitations, the iPad is probably the best performing piece of portable hardware that he has used to date in the cockpit. Hence and if you are seriously considering buying spending around US$500 on one to use in the cockpit, reading John’s posts (along with his previous posts about electronic flight bags in general) will be a must.
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We have received FAA approval for iPads in the cockpit under Part 135 (they have always been legal in the cockpit for Part 91 aircraft owners).
The iPad increases situational awareness and reduces pilot workload.. both of which increase safety. They are 100x better than any PC product on the market.. if I can use it in the cockpit, anyone can.
We will carry paper products for 6 months after which time we will go entirely paperless (AFM, GOM, OpSpecs all go on a shelf in the office).
We have FAA approval for ForeFlight and JeppTC and have found them both to be very user friendly.
As for applying to the FAA, we downloaded our FAA application from MaxManuals.com and with a little bit of tweaking, submitted to the FAA in less than a week and had our A061 (FAA approval for the iPad) in 30 days..
Is the iPad EFB considered an aircraft part/system to be added to the maintenance programs?