Does anyone have any thoughts about Continental being the 1st American carrier to go to the efb on its 777’s
I think they are really smart!
EFB? Electronic Flight Book? East Freda City? Easy Fellow - backup? Entire Flight Bad?
Remember, not everyone here is 100% up on all of the billions of abbreviations and acronyms used in aviation. By the way, am I correct in saying that EFB is Electronic Flight Bag?
You are correct, Dave. EFB= Electronic Flight Bag.
EFB’s have been very popular in the corporate/fractional world for a while. Sometimes they can be a huge pain in the rear, but it’s nice having every chart you’ll need right there next to you.
In the airline world, the pilots all carry their own chart bag of airline-issued charts. But they also have enough room in those airline cockpits for a chart bag. In corp. jets there often isnt enough room for all of the charts. One of those reasons is that the airlines only carry charts for airports that they can land at, not the whole US/Canada/Mexico/Bahamas that fractionals and charters do. The bag of charts for the continental US weighs 40 pounds and wouldnt even fit in the cockpit if the right seat was empty.
Tom Sullivan got into EFB during his first hour Friday. An airline pilot called in and they talked about it in depth.
For an airline I can’t see where an EFB is worth the trouble.
I am all for the technology but think about it.
Airline. Limited number of destinations. Limited even more by aircraft type (doesn’t do any good to give your 737-200 guys the plates for Hong Kong nor do you give them an airport that is not a destination) plus a few alternates for each destination adds up to on average 3 two inch binders.
Corporate. US coverage alone is 7 two inch binders and that does not include Alaska or Hawaii. World wide coverage that only includes paved runways over 4000’ long is 26 two inch binders. That is almost $1600 just in binders and stacked up is over 4’ tall. Q service is not available for most coverages so you have to do them the old fashioned way.
Oh for the days when I flew for the commuter and my plates fit in a single 2 inch binder. I was a floater so I had all stations. Most guys only had a 1 inch binder. Revisions were maybe 6 plates. 
I can see the use of EFB, even if it’s only for a limited area, because it would be lighter in weight than the paper copies and also easier to updated.