11,000 iPads to be Deployed as Electronic Flight Bags by United Airlines

Over the past few months, numerous commercial airlines have adopted the iPad for usage by their pilots to read manuals and navigational charts, something  that would have been a couple pounds of papers otherwise. The latest commercial airlines to take on the iPad is United Airlines, rolling out 11,000 iPads to United and Continental pilots to use as a replacement for their heavy flight bags full of charts and graphs.

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 iPad utilizes services from the Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck, an application in Appleā€™s App Store that the pilots will use. The implementation of iPads with the use of this app will allow them to access flight information and charts much more quickly and more efficiently than with the traditional paper books. The cramped cockpits in commercial airliners limit pilots to a limited space, which can now be cleared up with the usage of iPads.

Apple has experienced immense adoption of the iPad in personal and business settings, now reaching out to commercial airliners, essentially simplifying and redefining the true meaning of an ebook reader and tablet in one.

{via Mac Rumors}

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