From a 3-Inch Binder to a Tablet in Your Lap
Not long ago, every serious cross-country pilot carried a genuinely thick paperback book in their flight bag, one that got replaced every 56 days whether you liked it or not, listing every runway length, fuel type, and radio frequency at every airport in your region. Most of that same information now lives in an app on a tablet clipped to your kneeboard. What actually changed, legally, when that transition happened, and what are you still required to have that a tablet alone doesn't satisfy?
Today we're covering the Chart Supplement, the modern name for what pilots for decades just called the Airport/Facility Directory, and Electronic Flight Bags, the devices that have largely replaced it in the cockpit. One is a publication, the other is a delivery method, and understanding both is exactly what keeps "my iPad has everything on it" from becoming a legal blind spot.
Subscribe free to keep reading, what's actually inside the Chart Supplement (and why it updates on such a strict schedule) is coming up next.
