Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 240; Flight Crew Total 18000; Flight Crew Type 7500
Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Human-Machine Interface
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Release Refused / Aircraft Not Accepted
Equipment / Tooling; Company Policy; Human Factors; Procedure
First day of flight planning with our new commercially provided flight planning software. From the start I observed several major problems with the software; and some disturbing safety problems that were never resolved. 1. At least half the computers in flight operations are Windows XP with the Google Chrome internet browser. This combination is not supported by our system and fails in some print functions. 2. Half of these computers at any one time have either the printer jammed; or computer locked up. Many of these XP computers fail to display our weather web site. Doing so requires [specific] updates which are locked out by Company IT. Consequently; at any one time; there are only about 1/3 of the computers fully functional.3. After printing the flight papers the first thing I noticed was that the zero fuel weight [ZFW] was off by about 10;000 LBS. Our plane was a [special service] plane and; when full; the ZFW is about 160-162;000 LBS. The flight plan weight was 170;000 LBS. That means that all of the performance numbers; TO data; performance; fuel burn; cruise speed; fuel burn; and en route times were wrong. I queried Dispatch to correct the problem; and he checked with Load Planning. They said there was that much freight. I disagreed based on experience. The Dispatcher was unable to change the zero fuel weight. After receiving final weights; they were exactly what I had predicted. I asked for a revised flight plan from Dispatch and new fuel burn. The Dispatcher sent the same old flight plane with the incorrect zero fuel weight. 4. What's more; the format of the flight plan on the ACARS printer was in error; and in place of the release number; it had dashes. It should have read 'RL03' 5. More ACARS problems. Even based on the erroneous zero fuel weight; calm winds and a temp of 9C the takeoff data sheet was also incorrect. It came with flaps 15; engine anti-ice on. We tried to select flaps 5; and eng anti-ice off. ACARS continually insisted saying that flaps 5 exceeded the MATOGW; which is wrong. I've been taking off 1R in SFO flaps 5 on this flight for 10 years. The ACARS program is wrong. Also; we could not select engine anti-ice off. The temperature was 9C; with dry surfaces; and no moisture. These are two glaring errors by the take off performance ACARS part of the new flight planning system. Takeoff performance data should be simple and it is inexcusable to have these problems. 6. Flight plan times and fuel estimates were invalid. The flight plan was wrong by 21 minutes late. All the en route times were off relative to the en route flight plan time. I tried to manually input an updated ON time in ACARS; and the computer would not take the update. 7. Next computer problem. We increased the fuel slightly. That now requires a phone consultation with Dispatch. Now a second call to Dispatch after the zero fuel weight conversation. We had to wait another 5 minutes for Dispatch to input the change in the flight plan. Since I had to work on an XP computer with Google Chrome; the flight planning program failed to print the final release and the zero fuel weight was still wrong. 8. Another ACARS problem. Release verification on ACARS did not print the current maintenance release. We had no way of verifying the current maintenance status without a call to Maintenance Control. 9. Flight plan cruise speeds were significantly off based on the flight plan cost index. The actual aircraft cruise speeds were faster by 0.02M at a cost index of 14 for a [special service] 757-200 with winglets. Even after slowing the cost index to 0; we were still flying 0.015M faster than flight plan. This would have been even worse if the flight plan weights would have been correct. We have had several company notices recently on the importance of flight plan speeds. Well; the flight plan speeds are significantly in error. This gets really frustrating when the tools we are given to do the job are so inadequate combined with the insistence of managers that we 'stick to the rules.' 10. On arrival we checked the landing performance data. The numbers were all wrong again; because even after receiving the final correct weights from load planning; the new flight planning software still had the incorrect zero fuel weight; and all the performance numbers were off because of the 10;000 LBS ZFW error. We left 22 minutes late because of all the flight plan and performance problems. I was not able to get to the plane in a timely fashion again because you can't find a working computer that will print; and which will provide our commercially provided weather information--oh; and is not excruciatingly slow if you can find one that actually prints. These are embarrassing failures in many parts of the new system and should have been ironed out months ago. Even after identifying all the problems; Dispatch was unable to correct the problems. The flight planning system is not ready for operational use. The company should immediately go back to our previous 'in house produced' flight plans until the commercially provided system is fixed.
A B757-200 Captain critically addressed numerous problems encountered associated with the company's newly introduced; commercially developed and provided; flight planning software. The issues included inaccuracies in takeoff data; en route planning/forecasting; landing data and weight and balance computations. Also described were weaknesses in the hardware provided to access and print required documents and data.