Cockpit Printers? Anyone seen one or familiar with their use?

P

PHILIP GUZIEC

Filing Flight Plan
Joined
Nov 21, 2022
Messages
19
Display Name
TurboM20E
I'm a private pilot but a friend is looking at a company that has a business with in-flight printers. I assumed such things were obsolete, or going the way of the NDBs, but apparently that business is growing. Here is some descriptive text. Anybody familiar with this stuff, how it is used, and if it is simply mandatory equipment on the aging fleet or if it is still a part of modern cockpits? Any context at all would be appreciated.

"It also provides airborne printer products, such as ToughWriter series used in the flight decks of military transport, commercial transport, and business aircraft to print hard copies of data; ToughSwitch, an ethernet switches to connect multiple computers or ethernet devices; TMX and TMX-200, a high-speed data acquisition systems for applications requiring high channel counts and acquisition rates; Daxus DXS-100, a distributed data acquisition platform; SmartCorder DDX-100, a portable all-in-one data acquisition system; and Everest EV-5000 and RC-300 digital strip chart recording systems for aerospace and defense applications. In addition, the company offers networking solutions; aerospace products comprising flight deck printing solutions, networking hardware, and specialized aerospace-grade thermal paper; and data acquisition systems."
 
Every flight deck at my airline has a printer on it. We've had iPads for over a decade, but you should see the mound of paperwork we generate for any given flight. I'm finally starting to see fewer captains print the release on the dot matrix printers in the crew room or at the gate, so I'm thinking we'll be killing trees in the cockpit for quite a bit longer.
 
Fantastic intel. Thanks. It is kind of funny. I was so happy when I could ditch my paper subscriptions and just move to an Ipad for my part 91 flying.

So, even the most modern commercial equipment still has printers and requires paper backups to the ipads?
 
PHILIP GUZIEC said:
Fantastic intel. Thanks. It is kind of funny. I was so happy when I could ditch my paper subscriptions and just move to an Ipad for my part 91 flying.

So, even the most modern commercial equipment still has printers and requires paper backups to the ipads?
Click to expand...
Not really an iPad backup. We print the maintenence release document (the onboard part of the electronic Mx logbook), takeoff and landing performance, a HowGozIt after takeoff, Hazmat notifications, operational flight plans for oceanic (Class II) legs if they weren't printed before departure. We used to print ATIS, and other weather, but that's not as common now with the live weather on the iPad through the aircraft WiFi.

Charts and plates are backed up by requiring two iPads in the cockpit as well as having the trip plates/charts available in a second app.
 
Larry in TN said:
Not really an iPad backup. We print the maintenence release document (the onboard part of the electronic Mx logbook
Click to expand...
I'm very happy we have a dedicated iPad that stays on the aircraft as an electronic Mx logbook now. The printer is hardly needed anymore, but we do print out the PDC when we get it from ATC before departure. Some stuff is still printed automatically, like NOTOCs, even though we get a copy of it on the iPads as well.
 
PHILIP GUZIEC said:
Anybody familiar with this stuff, how it is used, and if it is simply mandatory equipment on the aging fleet or if it is still a part of modern cockpits?
Click to expand...
Even the most modern airliners have cockpit printers as part of their avionics systems, and those printers get used a lot. Clearance, ATIS, AOC (airline operations office) messages - all that gets printed most of the time. Many cockpits have very limited display real estate for longer messages, while paper is assumed to be in unlimited supply.

Paper also survives an electrical failure. whether that's a realistic failure scenario or not: it's easier for the aircraft maker to argue that a paper copy will always be there than to prove that the avionics screen will always be able to retrieve an older message.

iPads or other tablets are great for all the optional stuff, but for function that are legally required for flight, an uncertified device simply will not be assumed to have the integrity required for such functions. So while a printer isn't all that elegant, it gets the job done and it is an acceptable and approved solution.

- Martin
 
IMG_4769.jpeg

This is a pretty typical amount of stuff that'll come off the printer for one leg. My fleet gets terrible internet connectivity on the flight deck, so we probably print more than average, but I bet this isn't far off. At over 6000 flights per day, that's a lot of paper!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top