United and Continental Airline pilots will be lugging less weight into cockpits as their flight bags will soon be replaced with Apple iPads. United Airlines made the announcement today that shows how trustworthy and useful the iPad is becoming in the business world.
Pilots routinely carry flight bags filled with manuals, booklets and other items used during flight. UA’s new policy will help save fuel in the long run since bulky bags will soon be a thing of the past, being replaced by the relatively light iPad. Time and energy will be saved by not having to thumb through pages and pages of flight manuals or other documents when the pilot can easy make a few finger swipes or taps to get the information they need.
Each iPad, which weighs less than 1.5 pounds, will replace approximately 38 pounds of paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information in a pilot’s flight bag. A conventional flight bag full of paper materials contains an average of 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot. The green benefits of moving to EFBs are two-fold–it significantly reduces paper use and printing, and, in turn, reduces fuel consumption. The airline projects EFBs will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper a year which is equivalent to more than 1,900 trees not cut down. Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.
The Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck iPad app will be at least one source pilots will use in the future to help streamline efficiency in the cockpit.
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Great idea on paper (‘cuse the pun), but at what cost in Dyno-fuel to make…how many?…iPads…