Airbus Pilots’ Eyes Only: Better Searching of Airbus FOCT Manuals

“In Search of …  ”  Painting by Coplu (Coplu.Com)

Nerd Alert!

• I compiled this blog for Airbus pilots and ground staff who need to access the Airbus FOCT manuals.   It is written for those who wish to learn more about how to make full use of the impressive (but undocumented) search features in the Airbus FOCT.
• This blog has NO relevance for any other people. In fact this blog will make NO SENSE to people outside this piloting community.
• Some of the information is technical and might not make sense to people with less than advanced computer skills.
• The following is NOT official information.   This information is NOT provided in the FOCT.  This is my personal information that I offer in the hope that it may help you.

How to search Airbus FOCT manuals more efficiently

My father, Peter de Crespigny, 88, taking off in a Spitfire, September 2013.

The Airbus Flight Operations Consultation Tool (FOCT) comprises the user interface (Java) and data files that present relevant Airbus and airline manuals to pilots and other interested parties.   My A380 FOCT  for the A380 comprises 2.4GB of data spanning 2,600 files.  The FOCT supports other Airbus aircraft types.

I investigated the FOCT in detail in 2008 before the first A380 arrived at my airline.  I assisted my airline to optimise the our electronic manuals and made recommendations to Airbus to improve the FOCT.  The “DU Search” was one facility that I request in 2008 and that was subsequently released in the FOCT update in 2014.

Peter de Crespigny (Spitfire pilot at 88 years)

The FOCT provides limited documentation on how to search itself for information.

I provide the following notes to help others search the FOCT more effectively.  I use these tools every time I search the FOCT for data.  I have shared this guide with my airline and friends, all who later comment how it helped them to make faster and more narrowed searches.

I hope that this information helps you.

Understanding the FOCT Search Indexes

The FOCT uses the Lucene search engine.   Lucene is an open source, high-performance Java utility that provides search functions for compatible index files for almost unlimited data.

It is possible to view the structure of the FOCT indices.  The Luke (Lucene Index Toolbox) toolkit can open Lucene indices in the FOCT manuals, displaying the structure and showing interesting statistics.   For instance, the FOCT supports Lucene version 1 indices (Lucene is currently up to version 5).  Opening up the ECAM index reveals that there are currently 1,229 ECAM checklists in the A380 (up slightly from the 1,225 checklists that I described at page 157 of “QF32″ that I produced in 2011).  Likewise, the TITLE index reveals that there are just 6,931 pages in the A380 Flight Crew Operations Manual (up from 6,334 in January 2010) and just 257 pages in the Flight Crew Training Manual. This is irrelevant information except perhaps to consider the saving and benefits in using electronic rather than paper manuals. Given that an FCOM  “page” can span any length, we would need to use AT LEAST seven reams of paper to print just the FCOM and FCTM!

Every FOCT manual has a corresponding set of indices that are used to enable searches of that manual:

• FCOM – contents, context, ecam, title
• FCTM – contents, title
• MEL – contents, ecam, func_code, title

FOCT Indices:

The FOCT includes many instances of the following indices:  (important indices bolded)

• contents – Contains a listing of the unique words (except for stop words) for the selected manual.  For example the FCOM contains 18,000 unique words.   The “contents” index is used by default.  Word Search window uses this index.   For example: “contents:fire” or “fire”
• context – index not populated.
• ecam – ECAM checklists.  This index is used for internal FOCT purposes and is not user-friendly.  So there is little point searching this index.   For example, the Word Search of “ecam:al_29_10_060_01″ retrieves the ECAM “HYD G(Y) RSVR LEVEL LO” checklist.
• func_code  – Index of MEL entries.  For example, to find the “78-30-04 Thrust Reverser Lock” ECAM search using either the Word Search using “func_code:78-30-04″, or the Functional Code search using  “78-30-04″
• title – this is the page name / global display unit / GDU.   The discussion of his topic is now outside the scope of this document.  The title search was useful before Airbus updated the FOCT to provide the “DU Search” window.   For example, the DU Search of “4192” finds the same Autopilot page as the Word Search of the page “title: lg01087*”

Search using the following expression:   [indexname:]search_expression

• indexname is one of the index names listed above (in lower case).  The colon marks the end of the index name  (ie   func_code:23-72-01)
• search-expression is the alphanumeric search text

Understanding the FOCT Search Windows

The FOCT includes search windows for:

• Word Search   – defaults to “contents” index
• Interface Search – enable by setting “isInterfaceSearchActivated = true” in  ..\foct-conf\ct-access-search.config
• Index Search – Index not populated.  Not worth enabling.
• ECAM Search
• Functional Code Search –  defaults to ” “func_code” index
• DU Search – Search Display Units

As described previously, the Functional Code Search is similar to the Word Search, except that the Functional Code Search defaults to the “func_code” index.  For example, these two searches both locate the same MEL  (DDG) page for “24-21-01 Engine Electrical Generator”:

• FUNCTIONAL CODE SEARCH – “24-21-01″    (defaults to func_code index)
• WORD SEARCH  – “func_code:24-21-01″   (forced to search “func-code” index instead of default “contents” index)

FOCT Search

Peter de Crespigny (Spitfire pilot at 88 years)

Knowledge is everywhere.  The challenge for knowledge management systems is to  quickly identify then dive for just the pearls of wisdom rather than drown the in the ocean of big data.

The FOCT’s success as an electronic bookshelf depends upon the quality of the search engine and your ability to quickly find just the information that you need.   Unfortunately the FOCT provides little information about how to use the many search windows and no information about Lucene searches.

 The challenge …  dive for just the pearls of wisdom rather than drown the in the ocean of big data.

Enabled Search Features

Here are some search expressions that the FOCT’s search windows support.

Complex Search Examples

The following searches use various combinations of two words (icing and fuel) to show the options and their corresponding search results.

Keep Calm and Aviate!
(Painting by Coplu Coplu.com)

Note:  These search results were compiled in 2010 using the FOCT at that time.  Your search results may vary.

Flaring Iraqi gas fields (Photo Richard de Crespigny)

Notes:

1. All searches are case insensitive
2. The search operation only searches for valid search words (not including Stop Words)
3. You cannot search for a combined phrase with a trailing wildcard such as “t?re”?
4. FOCT boolean (AND OR NOT) queries do not obey a strict boolean logic. “A AND B” or “A AND NOT B” will work as expected, but “A AND B OR C” will give unexpected results. It’s best when thinking of the logic to think in terms of the logic simply being applied one step at a time from the left to the right. It’s also easiest to think in terms of MUST and MUST_NOT (“+”, “-” ) instead of in terms of AND, OR, and NOT.
5. Caution. When using a + prefix, every word must have a prefix, otherwise unexpected results are returned.
6.  The FOCT also includes other utilities that could provide additional functionality (i.e. ACE viewers).
7.  I am happy to share more deeper technical information about searching the many FOCT indexes if requested.

Suggested FOCT Modifications