Charles Alcock is managing editor of the AIN Media Group, having rejoined the company in 2019. He has been an aviation journalist since 1986, and previously worked for AIN from 1990 to 2017, most recently as editor-in-chief. His main focus is on covering new aviation technology and business models, as well as international news.
Having been raised in the London area, Alcock studied at the University of Manchester in the UK and earned an honors degree in Politics and Modern History. He speaks English and French, and some German.

Managing Editor

Charles Alcock

The information contained in aircraft operations and maintenance manuals is critical to safety, and it’s mandatory that companies manage these documents diligently and remain compliant with their regulators. However, these tasks can also be very burdensome and inefficient, and it’s that dilemma that software group Web Manuals is now trying to resolve with artificial intelligence (AI).
“We have found a way to help aircraft operators tie together all the complexities and make them digestible and usable,” explained Martin Lidgard, the Swedish company’s founder.
Web Manuals is seeking to increase the level of automation both for those writing and curating the manuals, and for those who need to read and apply their contents. This is being rolled out through its new Amelia platform, which provides an AI-driven search function.
“On the authoring side, some people think they don’t have a problem managing the regulations and then they realize once they start tying them together that they are not consistent. This isn’t something that can be managed in Word or Excel,” Lidgard said. “On the reader side, we’re trying to provide a simple-to-use tool to find specific points in 10,000 or more pages without getting information overload.”
According to Lidgard, Amelia’s search function is not restricted to just responding to carefully chosen keywords. “You can have a conversation with it to explain in different ways what you need to find in a manual. It’s like having an assistant to search for you,” he told AIN.
Initially, it was&nbsp;mainly time-poor pilots and mechanics under pressure who Web Manuals had in mind when it started tapping AI. “Then customers were coming back to us saying that the people responsible for authoring and managing the manuals also wanted access,” Lidgard explained.
After an initial few months in early operations, between 10 and 20 companies are using Amelia, and Web Manuals expects more to get involved now that the charter sector is entering a quieter part of the year. The company holds three user conferences each year at its Malmo headquarters and also in its San Diego and Singapore locations. Each of these yields a couple hundred ideas, and Lidgard said his team aims to introduce up to 70% of these within 12 months.
He acknowledged that not everyone is completely at ease about AI, based in part on concerns over the reliability of the information sourced. Amelia is essentially only searching in a closed loop—restricted to the manuals that are appropriate to any given user and so, in theory, it should be unable to deliver bogus outputs.
“This technology can seem less transparent than traditional programming, and we need to deliver AI people can trust,” Lidgard said. “When I started looking at this, I was concerned about it being too random, but what we do is with a lot of caution and insight. The system gives a summary of the search results and the exact source of each bit of information. There is nothing opaque about its learning engine, and we’ve carefully looked at the legal and risk side, too.”
The company has also continued to improve its standard Web Manuals platform, including the introduction of an iPad-compatible version. With more than 700 systems now in use, Lidgard said it has validated its claim that the technology can deliver time savings of up to 80% of the time taken to use conventional aviation manuals. In Web Manuals' view, used the right way, AI can only improve this while bolstering safety.

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