From Paper Charts to Predictable Cockpits: How EFBs and Custom Overlays Are Redefining Flight Safety

There’s a truth old pilots have known for as long as airplanes have flown — the sky is never the same twice. It doesn’t matter if you’ve crossed the same ridge line a hundred times or threaded the same approach down the same valley in the same season. Up there, variables multiply like wildfire. Weather shifts, towers rise, strips erode, rivers flood, radio calls get missed. And yet, the flight goes on.

Once, all you had to face these unknowns were your wits, a lapboard full of creased paper charts, and whatever you could recall from a hurried pre-flight briefing. The cockpit was a temple of ink and memory — heavy binders, crumpled NOTAM printouts, hand-scribbled altitudes bleeding into your palm. It was a time when the most valuable thing a pilot could carry was not in the airplane, but in their head. The right stuff wasn’t just skill at the controls — it was the ability to see trouble before it showed itself, to build a plan in your mind and keep it alive through turbulence, darkness, and doubt.

But even the best pilots are human. Memory fades, hands get busy, distractions creep in. And in aviation, the margin for error is thinner than a knife’s edge.

Then came the Electronic Flight Bag.

At first, it was a curiosity — an iPad strapped to a kneeboard, a few digital charts to replace paper. But it didn’t stop there. In just over a decade, EFBs transformed the cockpit from a place of paper clutter into an organized command center. Every chart, every plate, every airport diagram — there, at your fingertips, instantly searchable. Weather data streaming in real-time. Weight and balance calculated without touching a pencil. Your exact position, overlaid on satellite imagery, in sync with the moving map of your flight plan.

No fumbling for the right page. No flipping between sectional and approach plate while trying to hold a heading. It was all right there, in a format that let you stay in the cockpit, eyes up, mind ahead of the airplane.

Every accident investigation eventually circles back to the same question: What did the pilot know, and when did they know it? The difference between a safe flight and a reckless one is almost always planning. Theoretically, if a pilot could know 100% of what to expect on every flight, they’d never be caught off guard. And while that kind of omniscience will never be perfect, EFBs pull us closer to it than any technology before. They bring the whole internet into the cockpit, arranged in a way that doesn’t distract but enhances attention. No more glancing away to shuffle paper, no mental gymnastics trying to remember which tower you were warned about in the safety meeting.

For operators, the story gets even sharper. Every company has its own playbook — specialized routes, unique hazards, procedural quirks that never make it into public charts. These are written in GOMs, drilled in company manuals, briefed in pilot meetings. And then… they’re left in the pilot’s head. Days, weeks, months later, those details may blur. Not because the pilot doesn’t care, but because humans are fallible. We forget. We miss things. We’re vulnerable to slips. In the cockpit, that’s not just inconvenient — it can decide the fate of an entire flight.

Overflight was built on a single idea: What if pilots didn’t have to rely on memory alone? What if the same briefing a chief pilot gives in the hangar could live in the cockpit — not as a page buried in a manual, but as a visual, map-based cue appearing exactly where it’s needed? With custom overlays, we paste that knowledge directly onto the moving map. Hazards appear before they’re even visible out the window. Special procedures, company routes, restricted airspace — all integrated, all intuitive. It’s safety by design, not just safety by discipline.

The FAA teaches pilots to Plan, Perceive, Perform. Overflight strengthens the first two in ways paper never could. Plan — with every known hazard, procedure, and detail visible before you taxi. Perceive — with those same cues reinforcing your awareness in real time as you fly.

In wartime, the most feared pilots weren’t the fastest or the most aggressive — they were the ones who could process. Take in new information, make a plan, execute faster than their opponent. The edge was mental. The victory went to the pilot with superior awareness and preparation. That hasn’t changed. Today’s airspace isn’t combat, but the stakes are no less real. The winning pilot is still the one who arrives with the most strategic knowledge, and the tools to reinforce it in flight.

Overflight’s mission is simple: give pilots — and the operators who depend on them — the ability to fly with the same level of preparation as those legendary aces. Not just through skill, but through knowledge, reinforced in real time. Because in the end, the safest pilot isn’t just the one with the right stuff. It’s the one with the right information, exactly when they need it.