back to index

eFJ Tutorial

Overview

An electronic Flight Journal (eFJ) is just a text file containing personal flight records. Data is recorded using a simple, intuitive scheme that is easy for both humans and computers to manipulate. Flexible tools are provided for working with files that follow this scheme, including the ability to generate an FCL.050 compliant logbook as a standalone HTML file and, for easyJet pilots, the ability to extract the vast majority of required data from data downloaded from AIMS. All these tools are open source (distributed under GPLv3) and cross platform. They are also available as web applications that can be accessed via your browser if you don’t wish to install locally.

Who are eFJs suitable for?

I will be assuming that the reader understands the term “text file” and knows how to use a text editor to create and edit one. If this is not the case, you should probably stop reading now.

There are a lot of advantages to storing your personal flight records in a text file. These include:

If these sound like advantages to you, storing your personal flight records in an eFJ may be worth looking into. It does require a certain amount of self-reliance and technical ability, so it is definitely not suitable for everyone.

Tutorial

This tutorial will briefly describe how to create eFJ entries manually. If you are an easyJet pilot there is a tool available (with an online version) that means you won‘t need to do most of this, but it is worth knowing how to do it and that it can be done without too much difficulty if the need arises in the future. Non-easyJet pilots will have to do manual entry unless and until a suitably skilled pilot at your airline creates a comparable tool.

In this tutorial, we will create new eFJ entries using a couple of days of my flight records to demonstrate both the general ideas and some of the sector flags that can be used. Full details of the eFJ scheme can be found at https://hursts.org.uk/efjdocs/format.html.

Using the eFJ scheme for your data does not dictate any particular workflow or file system structure; it merely means that text files that follow the scheme can be created and processed by the supplied tools. For the purposes of this tutorial I will assume that you keep your flight records in a single, “master” eFJ and that you are going to create the new entries in a new text file that you will append to the master once you're happy with it.

Firstly, then, create a new, empty, text file with your favourite text editor. On the first line, enter a date in this form:

2024-02-04

This is an ISO 8601 date, which removes any ambiguity around what is a day and what is a month.

On the next line, enter details of the aircraft registration and type, separated by a colon:

G-EZBY:A319

On the next line enter details of the first sector of the day:

BRS/GLA 0702/0818 m

Hopefully this is fairly self-explanatory other than the m. The m means that you were pilot monitoring for this flight, and should not therefore log the landing.

Next, we enter the second sector:

/BHX 0848/1037 # Diversion due weather

The origin airport, GLA has been omitted — the parser assumes that your origin airport was the previous destination airport if this is done. This is optional: putting GLA/BHX is also fine, and makes the records more readable. A tool (described below) is provided to expand the entry to the long form if you prefer to type the short forms but read the long forms.

Comments relating to a sector are included by inserting a #. Anything after this is a sector specific comment. Full line comments that are not specific to a sector can also be added by placing a # at the start of a line — the # and everything after it will be ignored by the parser in this case.

Now, add the last sector of the day:

/BRS 1300/1341

For the next day’s flying, add:


    +
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045
    / 1127/1451 m

Note that both the origin and destination airfield can be omitted for a route reversal and that blank lines can be added at will to aid readability.

A + is used instead of an ISO date — this means add 1 day to the previous date. If you wanted to add three days, you would use +++. Again, this is completely optional — entering the full date also works fine.

The end result of all this should look like this:

    2024-02-04
    G-EZBY:A319
    BRS/GLA 0702/0818 m
    /BHX 0848/1037 # Diversion due weather
    /BRS 1300/1341

    +
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045
    / 1127/1451 m

The parser is perfectly happy dealing with data in this form, but it could be nicer for a human to read. Save the file, then go to https://hursts.org.uk/efj in your web browser. This is the web application interface of the eFJ toolkit; it is also simple to install this toolkit on your computer, which gives you access to both a command line and a graphical interface as you prefer.

Click the “Load” button to upload the text file you just saved. You can also drag and drop the text file onto the page or paste from the system clipboard by right clicking in the blank area on the right of the page if you prefer. The text of the eFJ should now be shown on the right hand side of the page.

Click the “Expand” button in the “Modify” group. This should modify the text to look like this:

    2024-02-04
    G-EZBY:A319
    BRS/GLA 0702/0818 m
    GLA/BHX 0848/1037 # Diversion due weather
    BHX/BRS 1300/1341

    2024-02-05
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045
    FNC/BRS 1127/1451 m

This fills in the assumed data, making it a bit easier for a human to read.

Now click the “Night” button in the same group. You should get:

    2024-02-04
    G-EZBY:A319
    BRS/GLA 0702/0818 n:18 m
    GLA/BHX 0848/1037 # Diversion due weather
    BHX/BRS 1300/1341

    2024-02-05
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045 n:6
    FNC/BRS 1127/1451 m

This has added flags for regulatory night flying. n:18 means 18 minutes of the flight took place in regulatory night hours. The toolkit can calculate this value so long as the airfield codes are in its database — it knows the IATA and/or ICAO codes of over 22,000 airfields, so the chances are good!

So far, we have assumed that these records belong to a Captain and thus everything is P1 flying. If you are a First Officer, you need to record whether flights are P1S or P2. Click the “FO” button, and you will get:

    2024-02-04
    G-EZBY:A319
    BRS/GLA 0702/0818 p2 n:18 m
    GLA/BHX 0848/1037 p1s # Diversion due weather
    BHX/BRS 1300/1341 p1s

    2024-02-05
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045 p1s n:6
    FNC/BRS 1127/1451 p2 m

The FO tool uses the m flag to determine the role for the flight. First Officers have the option of either recording the roles directly (i.e. just add a p1s or p2 flag to the relevant sectors) or to save a bit of effort with this tool.

For a logbook, a First Officer must also record the Captain’s name. Add the line:

{ CP:Smith }

under the first date, so that the final eFJ now looks like:

    2024-02-04
    { CP:Smith }
    G-EZBY:A319
    BRS/GLA 0702/0818 p2 n:18 m
    GLA/BHX 0848/1037 p1s # Diversion due weather
    BHX/BRS 1300/1341 p1s

    2024-02-05
    G-UZHI:A320
    BRS/FNC 0708/1045 p1s n:6
    FNC/BRS 1127/1451 p2 m

You can now either use the “Save” button to download this modified version of your eFJ or use the “Copy” button to copy it to the system clipboard. All the standard browser controls also work, so selecting the text and right clicking etc. are also options for getting this data out of the browser. Insert this data at the end of your master eFJ and you are done.

The eFJ toolkit includes the ability to summarise your flying in various ways and to create an FCL.050 compliant logbook. The web application interface does this for whatever is in the text area on the right, so, while you would generally want to do this for your master eFJ we can also see the results on the snippet we have created.

To download the data as an HTML logbook, click the “FCL.050 Logbook” button in the “Download” group. Unless you have used the web application in the same browser before, you will get a dialog box requesting you to specify the class of each type. Click the buttons until they both say “Multi Crew” then click “Save”. An HTML file will be downloaded to a location determined by your web browser. This is a standalone HTML file (i.e. it has no dependencies), so you can move it around at will and open it with any web browser. It is also designed to be simple enough to be opened with high fidelity by any spreadsheet program if you want to do some ad hoc analysis.

This HTML logbook can be converted to PDF using your browser’s print options, but for an even better experience try Prince XML. This is free for personal use and produces output of very high quality — if you fancied creating a hard copy logbook, this in combination with something like Lulu will produce very professional results.

To download a summary of your flying, click the “Summary” button in the “Download” group and, again, an HTML file will be downloaded to a location determined by your browser. Like the logbook, this file has no dependencies and is simple enough to be opened in a spreadsheet.

For further information, click on the “Help” button in the web interface. This will take you to the toolkit’s documentation which included details of all the tools, how to install locally and a link to the full description of the eFJ scheme.