I have a question regarding the need to have the AFM on-board in printed form. My AFM says that ‘it should be on-board in a form that is acceptable to the NAA’, in my case the Cz one. One would assume that the Cz CAA is required to abide to SERA, no? I admit I’m a bit lost regarding what kind of leeway national CAA’s have to deviate from SERA .. Probably others, like @airborne_again know more.
I’d have the emergency pages in printed form, no use fumbling with an iPad in case of stress.
What are you doing and what does your CAA say, if anything?
Other than the AFM, can’t I just carry all other certificates of my aircraft digitally?
SERA, my bold:
GM1NCO.GEN.135 Documents,manuals and information to be carried_
GENERAL
(a) In case of loss or theft of documents specified in NCO.GEN.135, the operation may continue until the flight reaches the base or a place where a replacement document can be provided.
(b) The documents, manuals and information may be available in a form other than on printed paper. An electronic storage medium is acceptable if accessibility, usability and reliability can be assured.
GM1NCO.GEN.135(a)(1) Documents, manuals and information to be carried
AFM OR EQUIVALENT DOCUMENT
‘Aircraft flight manual (AFM), or equivalent document’ means the flight manual for the aircraft or other documents containing information required for the operation of the aircraft within the terms of its certificate of airworthiness.
aart wrote:
I have a question regarding the need to have the AFM on-board in printed form. My AFM says that ‘it should be on-board in a form that is acceptable to the NAA’, in my case the Cz one.
Interesting requirement… Is this an aircraft from outside or before EASA? As the Cz CAA has to abide by EASA rules, my interpretation would be that the Cz requirements are the requirements of NCO.GEN.135. OTOH, the part which says that electronic media are acceptable is “only” Guidance Material… So who knows? AFAIK, my own CAA doesn’t say anything in the matter.
The aircraft is as EASA as it gets, certified in 2020.
An electronic AFM should be absolutely in line with SERA requirements.
If it is practical, however, is a different question. Over the lifetime of an airplane in many cases there is the need for changes in the AFM (e.g. due to newly installed equipment). Still the AFM has to be one document and not a random collection of several documents. That is the reason why physical AFMs are not books but binders where one can add and remove pages easily.
Although that is technically not a problem, I don’t think that many repair shops have experience with modifying PDFs accordingly.
On the other side: If I remember correctly for some bizzjet types it is already common practice that you get the AFM as digital document.
You can’t really edit PDFs.
Well I know you can, using the full version of Adobe Acrobat (which might now be rental-only, like most of their ripoff-ware) but it is a tacky process and it doesn’t reflow.
You need the original – the Word doc or whatever.
Peter wrote:
You can’t really edit PDFs.Well I know you can, using the full version of Adobe Acrobat (which might now be rental-only, like most of their ripoff-ware) but it is a tacky process and it doesn’t reflow.
Depends what you mean by “edit.” As Malibuflyer hints at, AFM updates are always page updates and removing/replacing/inserting pages in PDF files is not difficult. There are lots of (free) utilities that can do this. If you’re using a Mac, then even the default pdf reader of MacOS (Preview) can do it.
On the other side: If I remember correctly for some bizzjet types it is already common practice that you get the AFM as digital document.
Quite a compliment for my little steed then.. Bristell updates the aircraft documents like AFM and AMM digitally and they are
available at their website. That’s the background of my question.
Just make sure the PDF you want to edit isn’t password protected.
I had to deal with this recently and bought a PDF pwd cracker, which recovered the pwd for the Socata MM/IPC in about a minute: wombat 
But there may be stronger systems now.
Peter wrote:
Just make sure the PDF you want to edit isn’t password protected.
Lots of password removers on the web…
Malibuflyer wrote:
Still the AFM has to be one document and not a random collection of several documents. That is the reason why physical AFMs are not books but binders where one can add and remove pages easily.
Although that is technically not a problem, I don’t think that many repair shops have experience with modifying PDFs accordingly.
That is not an FAA requirement. The AFM is usually not updated unless one adds new equipment and there is a need for a Supplemental AFM which may be printed on a different size paper. Periodically AFM are updated by the manufacturer, but these updates are not required to be made in the AFM on board the aircraft unless they are the result of an AD. I have a POH document that just covers my Bonanza. It is in a small binder. I also have an 8.5 X 11 binder that I keep my original AFM that came with the aircraft from the factory and other AFM supplements for GPS, etc I also carry a PDF of all my AFM documents on ForeFlight. There are several FAA Chief Counsel opinions stating that the manufacturer can’t require updates to the AFM unless it is the result of an AD. Usually on the limitations section is FAA approved.
