AI Scan: digitise paper pages

What this does

Photographs the pages of a paper logbook, sends them off to be read, and brings the flights back through the same import wizard a CSV goes through.

Before you start

• AI Scan is a Pro feature. The paywall states the allowance: AI Scan is a Pro feature — Pro comes with a 10-page preview so you can try it on your own pages.
• You’re signed in and this device has a connection. Pages captured without either are held on the device and uploaded later (→ What you cannot take back).
• You’ll be asked to accept a privacy disclosure the first time you open AI Scan in each profile, so a second logbook on this device asks again. Pages are sent to a named cloud AI provider, and there’s no way to scan without accepting.
• A page already sent can’t be taken back. Removing its thumbnail afterwards stops neither the upload nor the charge. A page you discard before it’s sent is the exception, and a page that fails can be retried — see What you cannot take back below.

Steps

1. On the import screen, tap AI Scan.
2. Read How AI Scan handles your pages and tap I understand. It covers which provider processes the page, that the provider is contractually barred from training on it, that the image is held only while the scan runs, that the extracted text is kept for a short period afterwards, and that nothing gets into your logbook without you accepting it. It also asks you to scan logbook pages only (→ Two more things to know). Cancelling closes the scanner.

   

3. The scanner opens on the camera. Check the pill — Logbook or Roster / Document, for the kind of page you’re capturing — and the card naming where your pages are sent, EU processing or Global processing; tap the card to change region. You can add pages three ways: the shutter, the gallery button, and a PDF. If your account is EU-based and Global processing is selected, a dialog titled Your pages will leave the EU appears first, every time you open the scanner. Cancel backs out without opening the camera, Switch to EU changes the setting and carries on, and Continue anyway goes ahead as things are (→ Processing region).
4. Photograph the page: lay it flat, light it evenly, and get the whole page in the frame with its edges visible. Cropping and straightening are automatic and can’t be adjusted, so the photograph is the only part under your control.
5. Watch the number in the top bar — that’s your pages remaining. It turns amber below five and red at zero.
6. When you add a PDF, or more than one image from the gallery, the app asks first: Use AI Scan pages? — Importing N images will use N AI Scan pages from your purchased quota — one page per image. Tap Continue. A single gallery image and the camera shutter never ask — each spends a page with no prompt at all.
7. For a PDF, Choose pages to scan opens. Tap tiles to include or exclude them — one button switches between None and All — and confirm with Scan N pages.
8. To fix an upside-down page, tap its thumbnail before it’s sent and choose Rotate 90° clockwise, Rotate 90° counter-clockwise or Rotate 180°.
9. On a computer with no camera, the scanner opens on a fallback screen instead: tap Pick from gallery or Open PDF. Everything after that is the same.

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10. Tap Done. The pages upload and are read on the server, not on this device, so you can close the app; the scan’s card on the Scans page shows its progress. Most scans finish within a few minutes, though one can occasionally take longer.

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11. When the card on the Scans page reads Ready to review, tap Review N pages.

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    If a banner above the card reads A fallback model ran on N of these pages — please verify multi-engine columns before importing., a second model handled those pages. Note which ones they are before you go on.

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12. If Some pages use different columns appears, finish this batch, then reopen the scan for the rest. Pages whose headers differ from the first page are reviewed in a second pass — nothing has been dropped.

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13. The wizard opens on Review extracted scans, at the Map step. From here on it’s the import you already know, with the same mapping and date rules (→ B3, B4).

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14. On the Review step, check every row against the page in front of you before you import. What you’re reading is a machine’s reading of handwriting.

How to tell it worked

The Scans card reads Imported, the flights are in your logbook, and the green badge on the Import / Export / Backup card has gone. Rows the import couldn’t place are held in the Review inbox, the same as they would be from a CSV (→ B5).

If something goes wrong

What a page costs

One image is one page of your quota. One photo, one image from your gallery, or one page of a PDF each cost a page, so a 12-page PDF costs 12. Buying more is covered in Area K (→ K6), which is also where you’ll find what they cost.

What you cannot take back

Discarding a capture before it’s sent cancels it, for free. Removing a thumbnail from the strip stops the page wherever it’s got to: if it’s still being detected, cropped and straightened on the device, it never reaches the upload queue; if it’s queued but not yet sent, the queued entry is deleted. Either way nothing uploads, and nothing comes off your quota.

Once a page has been sent, discarding it no longer reaches it. Removing the thumbnail of a page that has started uploading or being read takes it off the strip on this device, but the page still uploads, is still charged, and still turns up on the Scans page afterwards. Check the frame before you press the shutter — it’s the surest way to avoid needing to discard at all.

A page that fails can be retried. On the Scans page (→ B9), a session where every page failed offers a Retry N failed pages button, and its Upload queue sheet offers the same Retry one row at a time — no need to remove the scan and photograph the page again. The stated policy is that a failed page is refunded: A failed page is refunded — check your remaining pages. Check the quota chip rather than assuming either way.

Being signed out is silent. Nothing uploads until you sign in again, and nothing anywhere says so. Being offline is better behaved: tap Done and you get Saved. AI Scan will process these pages when you’re back online., and the session shows Waiting for connection on the Scans page until it can send.

Processing region

Pages are processed in one of two regions, named on the capture screen. Moving to EU processing needs no confirmation; moving away from it does. Choosing Continue anyway in Your pages will leave the EU is recorded against your account — when, and how many times — on a best-effort basis, and that record never blocks or delays the scan, even when it fails to save. You can re-read the privacy disclosure any time from Profile Settings → Privacy: Image Processing → Review disclosure. The full detail on what the region decides is in → J9.

Two more things to know

Scan logbook pages only. Medical certificates, licences and other sensitive documents belong in the Document Store, where they stay encrypted on your device — the app calls that screen Certifications (→ G1, G2).

Why the Review step matters. Everything on these cards is a model’s reading of somebody’s handwriting, and the fallback-model banner exists because multi-engine time is misread often enough to be worth warning you about. Check every row against the page. It’s still faster than typing them, and it’s the only point where a misread number is cheap to fix.