Cathay Pacific talks to efbTechLogs Ground System

You may not know this You may have heard about efbTechLogs™, USI’s award-winning eTechLog software. You may also know that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines recently entered the history books when their connected EFB received an aviation-first Final Authorization for Paperless Use of an Electronic Technical Log on November, 1, 2008. What you may not know is that an important component of efbTechLogs’ architecture is its Ground System, which is the full fleet wide repository of efbTechLogs originated electronic tech log data. No more filing cabinets The Ground System is designed to be a number of things with one of them being a separate protected database – the “golden copy” of tech log data from all efbTechLogs enabled aircraft. Because of this secure method of storing electronic log data, you no longer have to call the storage company to ask for additional storage space to store all your historical paper tech logs.What about the data? Because the Ground System stores and manages the complete repository for an airline’s electronic tech log data, it seems only natural that the software provides a powerful search engine for data research, but it’s designed for other purposes as well. The Ground System can also be the single point of integration between onboard efbTechLogs software and other airline systems such as an M&E system (ULTRAMAIN).Are you going my way? Even though we originally designed the data flow to be from the onboard software to the Ground System software, then to an airline’s M&E system software, Cathay Pacific Airways noticed the powerful data search and correlation capabilities within efbTechLogs, and came up with a brilliant idea: What if there was an interface going the other way from ULTRAMAIN to the Ground System? With such an interface, users could have native web based (browser based) access to paper originated tech log data, including use of the compelling search engine residing in the Ground System. Consider it done. So, that’s what we did, and in the process added additional features Cathay wished to see, such as a graphical representation of historical data in a temporal context, which allows users to see trends in related problem occurrences over time at a glance. This new representation has literally blown minds. So, with this new interface (beginning with ULTRAMAIN Release 8.1E.3) the efbTechLogs Ground System accepts tech log data from ULTRAMAIN. It’s done and delivered. Cathay has the Ground System in a Pilot program at this time.A Bridge to Onboard efbTechLogs This new interface between ULTRAMAIN and efbTechLogs provides a new path to a paperless cockpit. With the Ground System in place, it’s easier than ever to transition one aircraft at a time into new technology. ULTRAMAIN customers can install the Ground System under a no-cost evaluation program currently being promoted by USI, so you can experience the ease of use and improved performance of v9 web-based technology. If you want to experience v9, the Ground System evaluation is the perfect place to start. Simply contact USI to get the software. We may ask that you sign a waiver before viewing your defects.