A new way for flight crew communication: Flight Operation Notifications Manual
Effectivity: Challenger 300, Challenger 350, Challenger 604, Challenger 605, Challenger 650
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By: Isaac Messallem - Technical Services, Global Series, Business Aircraft, Customer ExperienceThe Flight Operation Notification Manual (FONM) will soon be available for Challenger aircraft operators.
Over the years, Bombardier has reached out to flight crews for items focusing on the following categories, mainly via Operational Advisory Wires (OAW):
Operational or technical issue affecting the flight deck
Guidance to carry out a pre-flight reset of a system or component
Recommendations/operational guidance for condition or observation during in-service experience and workaround where applicable
Shortcomings with the current method include:
Maintenance Advisory Wires (AW) mixed with OAW information often miss out on the operational message
OAW and Customer Newsletter articles do not always reach the pilot community and are not tailored for flight crew use
Smart Ops is not a revision-controlled tool/document and is no longer updated
Need one stop shop for all operational items to alleviate the need to search in different locations
Need formal communication of operational updates directly to flight crews via approved flight manuals
How do we improve?
To overcome the shortcomings of the current communication tools and to ensure that all communications reach flight crews, we have developed the Flight Operation Notifications Manual (FONM). The manual provides flight crews with readily accessible information relating to items that may affect flight operations and is an extension of the FCOM1. The FONM manual content is controlled and revised in a similar manner to other flight manual publications.
After extensive experience on the Global platforms with the FONM that was launched at the end of 2019, the FONM has been well received by the pilot community and several improvements have been incorporated since then.
We are now poised to launch a similar process for Challenger platforms.
Five manuals will be published, in conjunction with the next pertinent Challenger platform Flight Manuals annual revision cycle:
Challenger 604
Challenger 605
Challenger 650
Challenger 300
Challenger 350
The manual is organized into sections with a Table of Contents, using abbreviated titles similar to those used in the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH). The FONM provides the condition and associated crew action/workaround on the first page and a detailed description and corrective action on the second page. In addition, an item may be inserted as a General Notification (GEN) when of interest to flight crews but can be covered by brief descriptions and additional reference(s). In such cases, it will be presented at the end of the pertinent system categories as a GEN to allow flight crew to intuitively find their topic of interest.
Please take the time to look at the first edition of the manual which will expand over time and learn how it can improve your operational experience.