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Serious question, why are we still using the old paper logbooks for everything?

I just finished a heavy check on a 737 at our hangar in Tampa, and the paper trail was a nightmare. We had three separate binders for the same aircraft, one with pages from 1998 that were literally falling apart. I compared that mess to a job I helped with last month where the operator had fully switched to a digital system. The difference was night and day. Finding an AD note took 2 minutes on a tablet instead of 45 minutes of flipping through crumbling paper. One specific example: tracking a repetitive inspection for a flap actuator. On paper, you're hoping someone wrote it in the right column. Digitally, it flags you automatically. The paper system isn't just slow, it's a genuine risk for missing something. Has anyone else's shop made the full switch, and did you run into pushback from the older guys?
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3 Comments
kevin_wells46
That flap actuator example hit home with me. I used to be one of the old guys who swore paper was safer. But after we had a near miss on a 737 in Atlanta because a logbook page got ripped out and nobody caught the inspection gap, I changed my mind completely. @grace_hunt84 I hear you on the hacking thing, but our digital system has triple redundancy and offline backups. A power surge wiped out our server once and we still had everything on the tablets that were disconnected. The older guys in my shop still grumble about it, but now they get a cup of coffee while the tablet does the scanning instead of fighting with a three ring binder that bites their fingers.
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thea_chen
thea_chen3mo ago
Our old foreman still prints his emails to file them.
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grace_hunt84
Actually, that's a solid system. Paper doesn't crash or get hacked.
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