AvioBook

AvioBook Flight is a professional Electronic Flight Bag (EFB): the iPad app that replaces the heavy paper kitbag pilots used to carry, pulling everything they need for a flight into one connected place. It sits at the centre of the AvioBook suite — part of Aviovision and now the Thales Group — and is built on a simple idea: created by pilots, for pilots.

What it does

From pushback to parking, the app keeps the relevant information within reach. Pilots get an overview of their upcoming flights and a pre-flight Briefing with slot updates and colour-coded NOTAM and METAR/TAF data. The Operational Flight Plan (OFP) pre-populates fields and automatically calculates fuel trends and waypoint estimates; Weight & Balance handles the electronic loadsheet; Performance covers take-off and landing; and Globe presents an interactive 3D map with dynamic weather layers and an in-flight fuel-optimisation tool. Add to that Charts, a searchable document Library, smart Checklists, Forms that report back to operations, and a set of in-cockpit Tools. Crucially, data flows between these modules and the airline's back office, and every module can be tailored to an operator's own procedures and branding.

The challenge

Building for the flight deck is a different discipline from building a consumer app. The information is dense and the stakes are high, so every screen has to present the right data at the right moment — readable at a glance and never distracting. It has to be dependable offline, because a crew can't rely on connectivity in the air, and then sync cleanly with the back office once a connection returns. It has to integrate a lot of moving parts — flight data, weather, performance, charts and documents from different sources — and keep them consistent across modules. And it has to flex to many different airlines from a single codebase, while features like the 3D Globe stay smooth on iPad hardware.

My role

I worked on the AvioBook Flight iPad application as an iOS Developer, focussing mainly on the Weight and balance section of the app.

Outcome

AvioBook Flight is in day-to-day operational use at airlines such as KLM and Flying Group.