User Manual

The typical flow for a flight:

1. Flight Setup — import the flight from SimBrief (one click with your username) or load the company OFP PDF. Everything else fills itself from this.
2. Weather — METAR/TAF for departure, destination and all alternates are fetched automatically. Refresh before you lose internet; the last data stays available offline.
3. Performance— check fuel/weight planning, take-off speeds, and run the weight & balance if you use it.
4. Inflight Display — during the flight: departure card, cruise ETAs, the FPL waypoint list (log times/fuel over each waypoint), arrival card, and the post-flight times/fuel summary.
5. Moving Map— press “Start tracking” after loading the flight: with onboard internet (e.g. Starlink) the app records the whole trajectory from the free ADS-B networks and fills chocks-off, take-off, waypoint ATAs, landing and chocks-on by itself, while continuously refreshing the ETA. The pilot doesn't type a thing.
6. TechLog — at the turnaround, cross-check the metered fuel uplift against the gauges.

The app is a PWA: on an iPad/phone open it in the browser and use “Add to Home Screen” to get a full-screen app that also works offline.

Using it over your home WiFi: the app runs on your computer and every device on the same network can open it at http://<your-mac>.local:3002 (the Bonjour name is stable; find the raw IP with ipconfig getifaddr en0 if you prefer). For tablet use, run the production build (npm run build && npm start) — it is faster and works offline. Over plain HTTP the browser disables the offline cache and device GPS; everything else works while the computer is reachable.

Three ways to load a flight:

• SimBrief — enter your SimBrief username once (kept in Settings) and press “Import latest OFP”. The full navlog, fuel, weights, times and alternates are imported.
• OFP PDF (LIDO) — loads a company OFP in the LIDO “Flight Dispatch Release” layout (as used by Qatar Airways and other LIDO airlines). The PDF is parsed on your device and never uploaded anywhere. After importing, always spot-check the figures.
• Manual entry — type the basics (flight number, airports, times, route, alternates). Fuel and weights are then entered on the Performance page. Manual flights have no waypoint list.

Backups: “Download flight backup” saves the whole flight as a JSON file; “Restore” loads it back — including backups exported from the original eFlightBag app. “Clear flight” removes the current flight; “Clear all data” wipes everything including preferences.

Five tabs, mirroring the phases of the flight:

• Departure — STD (edit it to record a revised STD), a live “To go / Delay” counter, chocks-off time, final ZFW (which drives TOW and LWT), ATIS/RWY/intersection. If the OFP flagged ETOPS or MEL items, acknowledge buttons appear until you tap them.
• Cruise — take-off time (entering it computes the enroute day/night profile), flight time, TOD (ETA − 30 min), ETA in UTC and local, estimated arrival fuel and landing weight, plus sunrise/sunset at both airports and enroute.
• Live position(on the Cruise tab) — fetches the aircraft's real-time position from the free community ADS-B networks (adsb.lol / airplanes.live / adsb.fi — no key, no cost) or from this device's GPS, finds where you are along the planned route, and shows how many minutes ahead/behind plan you are running — one tap applies it as the enroute delay and shifts the ETA. Ocean coverage on the free networks is limited; device GPS needs HTTPS (or localhost). Not for navigation.
• FPL — the waypoint list. Auto keeps the current leg in view. Tap a waypoint to log the actual time (ATA) and fuel on board: saving projects your time deviation as an enroute delay (moving the ETA) and carries the fuel deviation forward to every later waypoint and the arrival-fuel estimate. Amber/red fuel lines mean you are within 300 kg of — or below — the minimum required fuel over that waypoint.
• Arrival — ETA, delay vs STA, arrival ATIS/temperature/stand, dispatch contact, and arrival notes.
• Post-flight — actual times (block/flight time computed) and the fuel summary with copy buttons for the tech log paperwork.

At the end of a flight, open Inflight Display → Post-flight (or Flight Setup → Manage) and tap “Close & log flight”. The flight — times, fuel, passengers, and the recorded track — is archived to the Logbook page, and the current flight is cleared so the next leg starts clean.

It logs what actually happened. If you let the Moving Map run, chocks-off, take-off, waypoint passages, landing and chocks-on are detected automatically — but any time you typed or corrected by hand always wins, and that corrected value is what gets logged. Each time is tagged so you can see at a glance what was auto-detected, edited (auto value you changed), or entered manually.

The Logbook shows running totals (block time, flight time, and the rolling 90-day block total for currency), and each entry expands to the full times, fuel, the auto-detected event timeline, and a replay of the flown track on the chart. Export the whole logbook as CSV (opens in Excel / imports into most logbook apps) or JSON at any time.

The Weather page automatically shows METAR and TAF for the departure, destination and every alternateof the loaded flight — plus any airport you add manually. Data comes from the NOAA Aviation Weather Center (the same worldwide feed most EFB products use), fetched through the app's own server proxy with a fallback source when the main API is down.

• Each station shows the raw text and a plain-language decode.
• The colored badge is the flight category computed from the METAR (VFR / MVFR / IFR / LIFR), and the age badge turns amber when a METAR is older than 75 minutes.
• The last fetched data is cached on the device — you can re-read your briefing weather in flight, offline. METARs refresh every 30–60 min; TAFs are issued every 6 h but can be amended anytime.

Three tabs:

• Weight & Fuel — the OFP fuel plan (taxi/trip/ramp, required, departure fuel — each with a reset icon to restore the OFP value) and the weight table (max, estimated, and margins; the limiting weight is marked “(L)”). Tip: typing “8.5” in a weight field means 8,500 kg.
• Speeds — take-off data card (loadable from an OPT text export), with computed ISA deviation, pressure/density altitude, runway wind components, VR true airspeed and ground speed, and the tire-speed margin. Minimum clean = VREF30 + 80.
• Weight & Balance— a generic W&B calculator that works for anyaircraft, not just the 777. Pick a profile (777-300ER/-200LR/F, 787, A350 templates with public structural limits, or the complete C172 example), enter station weights and fuel, and get ZFW/TOW/LDW with limit checks, %MAC or arm, and CG envelope charts. Airline balance data (DOI, index tables, fuel vector, envelopes) is operator-specific — add yours via “Edit” from the airline's AHM560/loading manual; until then the calculator runs in weight-check mode.

Enter the required fuel, the fuel remaining before refuel, the meter readings (liters or US gallons, multiple meters supported) and the fuel specific gravity. The app computes the uplift in kg and the discrepancy: metered uplift − (departure fuel − arrival fuel) − fuel used on ground. Fields cross-fill each other when empty, the way the paper cross-check is normally done. The maximum allowed discrepancy is fleet-specific — use the company software for the official figure.

Record each NOTOC line: primary hazard class (the 12 ICAO drill categories), the drill letter(s) and where the load is. Each entry links to its full emergency drill card — inherent hazard, hazard to aircraft/occupants, spill-or-leak procedure, firefighting procedure and additional considerations (per ICAO Doc 9481 drills).

• Briefing— departure and arrival briefing prompt lists (PM items, PF items, threats & mitigations, special operations).
• PA Guide— editable announcement templates with placeholders like [DESTINATION_NAME], [DURATION] or [ETA_LOCAL]. “Generate PA” fills them from the loaded flight; anything it couldn't fill stays highlighted so you catch it before keying the PA. Your name, airline and crew names are set in Settings.
• Crew Rest — splits the cruise window into rest periods. Window either derived from take-off/ETA (with configurable margins after take-off and before landing) or entered manually. Schemes like R/2R/R give some crew double units. All rests get equal units rounded down to whole minutes.

Fast, fully-offline decoders — paste and read:

• METAR / TAF — paste any raw report; decoding is instant, including trends (TEMPO/BECMG/PROB), RVR and remarks.
• SNOWTAM — decodes the current ICAO Global Reporting Format (GRF, in force since Nov 2021): runway condition codes per third, coverage, depth, contaminant, reduced width, and the situational items (snowbanks, drifting snow, chemical treatment…). Legacy pre-2021 messages are detected and flagged.
• RCAM / RWYCC — type a code like 4/3/3 for an instant braking-action readback, with the full Runway Condition Assessment Matrix and its upgrade/downgrade rules below.
• Metric FL — the China RVSM metres⇄feet table; tap a level for a large-type readback.

• Everything lives only on your device (browser storage). There is no account, no cloud, no tracking. OFP PDFs are parsed locally.
• The only network calls are: fetching weather (through the app's proxy to NOAA), and the SimBrief import you trigger yourself.
• Use Flight Setup → “Download flight backup” before clearing data. Backups are plain JSON and also accept files exported by the original eFlightBag.
• Installed as a PWA, the app shell and your data are available offline; weather shows the last cached reports with their age.

PilotDeck is free software under the GNU GPL v3. It is a from-scratch reimplementation and extension of eFlightBag by Ricardo Riet Correa (GPLv3), whose feature set and calculations it faithfully ports. Airport database from the public-domain OurAirports project. METAR/TAF parsing by the MIT-licensed metar-taf-parser. Weather data by the NOAA Aviation Weather Center. SNOWTAM/RCAM decoding implemented from ICAO Annex 15 / PANS-AIM (Doc 10066) and FAA AC 91-79B public material.