B777 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 15000; Flight Crew Type 2500
Human-Machine Interface; Distraction; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Time Pressure; Workload; Training / Qualification
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown
Flight Crew Diverted
Human Factors; Company Policy; Chart Or Publication; Airport; Aircraft; Manuals; Weather
We found [required information] documents less than accessible during a weather divert which compromised safety.  The [hard card] diversion guide and approach briefing card have been removed from the [on board paper diversion chart package] and can only be accessed via the iPad.  With the iPad unusable below 10;000 feet (following difficulty communicating with dispatch taking valuable time in the holding pattern at 15;000 feet) and subsequently having to access several documents left little time to do so.  Both the Relief Pilot and I were trying to access separate documents in our respective iPads in the interest of time management and one iPad froze for a period rendering it worthless and distracting.  What in the past would have resulted in quick retrieval by reaching into the flight bag now has become a production.  [This is in addition to] the added time required [to locate and access it].  The lack of [adequate] training; not knowing where to find things; the dependence on an electronic device that is susceptible to loading and freezing problems. All combined with having a new; unfamiliar flight information menu [for which we've received inadequate training] over complicated the problem.  While the new flight information menu is intuitive under normal operations; during irregular operations there is no time to be searching.  The combination of cumbersome and unfamiliar functions on the iPad and the new flight information menu made the divert a far greater struggle than it should have been.  Our margins of safety have been eroded and we are trading on our high experience levels which cannot be consistently counted on.  In addition; we did not have an approach for Runway XX in ZZZ; the runway in use.  We were attempting to brief the RNAV approach which was in the box and struggling to get it done without the hard card.  The technology; as turned on by the airline management; is not ready for use and the [paper] backups have been removed prematurely.
In response to questions the reporter advised the following: The iPads are issued to each pilot and are not fixed equipment on the aircraft.  Although having access to them assists in gaining familiarity the reporter believes much more extensive training in content location and speedy access is necessary as it currently takes excessive searching with the clumsy to use and excessively sensitive touchscreen access.  In addition; the software is not off the shelf state of the art but; rather; an in house development that is not intuitive or user friendly and is; critically; slow to load and display even basic text windows; each page going through a phase of 'fuzziness' before shifting to useable clarity.  Finger touches to enlarge or reduce screen content too often result in an inadvertent activation of a 'link' taking the user away from desired content to a non-relevant page thus producing the need to re-search for and load content that was abandoned.Company rules prohibit the use of the device below 10;000 feet where much of the processes involved in diversions take place.  The reporter clarified that a 'hard (diversion) card' is/was a physical object of plasticized paper; immediately accessible by the flight crew; containing pertinent diversion information and resources.  It has been declared redundant and the material therein must now be accessed via the iPad; is much less accessible and can only be utilized; by company regulation; where crews are least likely to need it.The reporter has experienced two diversions with only the iPad resource; both domestic events in a friendly environment to airports with whose general locations and surrounding terrain the flight crews were nominally familiar.  She believes that an international diversion in unfriendly terrain; with the language; FIR crossings and altimetry issues; etc. inherently encountered will be decidedly more complex and made even more difficult by the idiosyncrasies of information access on the tablet.The reporter advised that the tablets will ultimately be 'plugged' into the aircraft database and doing so may alleviate some of the loading delays; etc.  She remains convinced; on the other hand; that more extensive and detailed training on content location; speedy access and prompt/crisp display of needed resources is a necessity to make the device remotely as valuable as the paper tools it is intended to replace.
A B-777 flight crew found their workload during a weather diversion to have been significantly increased due to the difficulty of accessing required information; data and diversion planning resources utilizing the iPad tablet devices recently instituted by their company to replace previous paper based documents.