Every airline organisation relies upon an aviation publishing department to maintain its flight operations documentation, and at the heart of these operations is the requirement to manage Airbus and Boeing aircraft manuals. Representing over 90% of the world’s aircraft market Airbus and Boeing are complex aircraft and through continuous improvement are becoming more advanced every year.
However, as a result of manufacturers providing manuals in a structured publishing format (e.g. XML) they inadvertently create a mismatch between manufacturers and airline operators as they are not easy for end-users to manipulate. This has a knock-on effect of slowing down the distribution of updates to flight operations and, indeed, re-integrating them into on-board computer systems (e.g. EFB).
Boeing and Airbus issue regular updates so it is essential for airlines to maintain their documents on a frequent basis for both operational and, of course, compliance reasons (e.g. EU-Ops, FAA, plus other civil aviation authority regulations). Yet trudging through masses of complex structured documents day in, day out can be a chore.
Boeing and airbus manuals
This problem can be much worse during peak seasons when new aircraft are being bought or leased, and so the document management pressures increase exponentially. This ends up putting an increasing amount of pressure on in-house publishing teams as they battle to update, publish and distribute documents on time and to the right people. All this is however essential in order to ensure compliance, safety and getting aircraft into service.
However, with so much on the line, a pressurised delivery environment can contribute to human error. Mistakes can be made with updates missed and incorrect manuals distributed to flight teams. When safety is paramount for all carriers the risk must be mitigated through the selection of a system that minimises error. Flight operations cannot be compromised so what can be done to help your publishing team?
Read the rest of the article to consider two different options.
All staff require training and development, that’s a given. Therefore, your airline could simply bite the bullet and invest in on-going structured content training for your in-house team or hire in new external talent. Alongside this you would also need to consider the cost of investing in the right infrastructure and software. Scale, ability and technology factors are critical.
However, this can all end up being costly for overheads - after all, while it may be easy drafting in new staff and investing in training, scaling back down during quiet periods may not be as easy to do. In terms of infrastructure and software, current in-house solutions aren’t well designed for end-users in mind, largely down to not being user-friendly. Therefore, these solutions don’t tend to meet the requirements or expectations that you might need and could create more work than is needed.
The alternative of working with document management experts means you could be saving on costs in the long-run. In addition to this, it could help ease the stress for your in-house team in managing and manipulating complex documents and instead, they could concentrate on other important duties as subject matter experts.
Partnering with an airline document management expert means you can keep full control over documents, but with the benefit of receiving a much-needed boost in your document management efforts when you really need it.
For instance working with a partner that has a comparison tool at its disposal minimises the time it takes to update Boeing and Airbus manuals. It is rare for in-house teams to have the most up-to-date comparison tools as they are invariably innovations only experts are able to use effectively.
Managing complex, structured documentation in-house is a burden for airlines. Especially if they have no specific expertise in the likes of XML, FrameMaker publishing or other kinds of document manipulation. Also, when you consider how flawed some in-house solutions can be, it creates more challenges for under pressure employees and affects:
The alternative for airlines is to partner with document management experts. The great thing about this solution is that you’ll be able to develop a system that works for your airline and the approach you'd like to take to support your flight operations team. Plus, you’ll reap the rewards of this extended team in helping your airline organisation easily deal with Boeing, Airbus and other manufacturers run smoothly and ensure that you meet important deadlines, meet regulatory hurdles and sail through audits.
Learn more about how to select a document management solution by downloading our free guide.
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