Let’s be clear up front: this is not an anti-tablet piece. Electronic flight bags are one of the best things to happen to general aviation. Moving-map charts, georeferenced plates, weather in the cockpit — an iPad running ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot does things a paper bag full of charts never could. The argument here is narrower and, I think, uncontroversial: a device that does that much is worth backing up, and a printed checklist is the cheapest, most reliable backup you can carry.
EFBs fail in documented, ordinary ways
The case for a backup doesn’t rest on some exotic failure. It rests on the boring ones that happen all the time. An EFB-focused trade outlet, iPad Pilot News, frames the standard mitigation as “two of everything” plus a charged backup power source, precisely because devices die from forgotten charging, failed cables, and in-flight power loss — see Does Your EFB Backup Plan Pass the Test?. None of that is dramatic. It’s a dead battery, a flaky Lightning cable, a tablet that rebooted at the wrong moment. It just happens to occur at the exact moment you reach for your before-landing checklist.
Heat is the failure mode pilots underestimate
The one worth understanding in detail is heat. A tablet clamped to a glareshield in direct sun doesn’t gradually get warm — it hits a thermal limit and shuts itself off to protect the hardware, sometimes within minutes. That thermal shutdown is a designed safety behavior, and it’s distinct from — and much more common than — thermal runaway, the more serious cascade where heat spreads between lithium-ion cells. The distinction is laid out in CTS Systems’ overview, Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) Thermal Runaway.
Lithium-ion incidents are not rare across aviation as a whole: NBAA, referencing compliance data, has noted that smoke, heat, or fire events involving lithium-ion batteries occur more than once a week across U.S. aircraft — see Apple Issues New Compliance Data for iPad EFB. It’s worth being precise about that figure: it spans all of aviation, not just GA singles, so treat it as evidence that these batteries deserve respect, not as a GA-specific accident rate. The practical point for a single-pilot flight stands either way — the thing displaying your checklist can get too hot to work right when the cockpit is baking, which is often exactly when the workload is highest.
The regulatory baseline: available in the aircraft
There’s a reason “have a backup” is more than a suggestion. Under 14 CFR 91.9, the approved Airplane/Rotorcraft Flight Manual — or the approved manual material, markings, and placards — must be available in the aircraft on each flight. An EFB can serve that role when it meets the applicable guidance, but the regulatory baseline is availability, and availability is exactly what a single point of failure threatens.
The FAA’s own guidance for Part 91 operators moving toward a paperless cockpit, Advisory Circular 91-78, addresses paper backups during the transition to EFB use. I’m deliberately not quoting its exact wording here, because the responsible thing is to read the primary document rather than a secondhand summary — you can pull it straight from the FAA at AC 91-78, and the broader Part 91 EFB guidance in AC 120-76E. The general thrust — that a backup should be readily available to the crew while you build confidence in a fully electronic setup — is consistent with everything else here.
Redundancy is the point, not nostalgia
This next part is editorial framing, not a cited fact. Paper isn’t nostalgia. It’s the fallback layer in a system built on the honest assumption that any single point of failure — battery, screen, software crash, thermal shutdown — will eventually fail at the worst possible time. That’s the same logic behind running a checklist to back up a flow, and behind carrying a handheld radio, and behind knowing the field elevation without asking the box. You don’t add redundancy because you distrust the primary system. You add it because you respect how systems actually fail.
A printed checklist is a particularly good backup because it has no failure modes worth mentioning. It doesn’t need power, it doesn’t overheat, it doesn’t update itself at 200 feet AGL, and it costs almost nothing to reprint when something changes. Laminate it or slip it in a kneeboard and it will outlast several tablets.
What a good paper backup looks like
If you’re going to carry one, make it worth carrying:
- Print it clean and legible. The whole value is that you can read it instantly when the tablet is dark. Big enough type, honest spacing, no clutter.
- Match it to your aircraft and your habits. A backup that lists your actual tail number, your actual panel, and the flows your instructor taught beats a generic sheet you half-recognize.
- Keep the killer items obvious. Fuel, mixture, flaps, gear, trim — the items you least want to miss should be the easiest to find on the page.
- Keep the approved POH aboard too. The checklist is a memory aid built from the book; the book still has to be in the airplane.
The goal isn’t to choose paper or the tablet. It’s to fly with both, and to make the cheap, reliable one good enough that the day the expensive one quits is a non-event.
Common questions
Isn't a second tablet a better backup than paper?
A second device adds redundancy, and 'two of everything' is genuinely good advice. But two tablets can share failure modes — the same heat, the same forgotten charge, the same software update. Paper fails in none of those ways, which is exactly why it complements a second device rather than duplicating it.
Does the FAA require a paper backup for Part 91?
The regulatory baseline in 14 CFR 91.9(b) is that the approved flight manual material be available in the aircraft. FAA advisory material addresses paper backups during the transition to EFB use — read AC 91-78 and AC 120-76E directly for the specifics rather than relying on a summary, and treat this as background, not legal advice.