United Airlines Launches Paperless Flight Deck With iPad (1,900 trees/326k gal of fuel saved a year)

[onehandle]

Source: Yahoo News



CHICAGO, Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- United Continental Holdings, Inc. today announced that it is converting to paperless flight decks and deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. The electronic flight bags (EFB) replace paper flight manuals, and as a first for major network carriers, provide pilots with paperless aeronautical navigational charts through an iPad app. Distribution of iPads began earlier this month, and all pilots will have them by year end. "The paperless flight deck represents the next generation of flying," said Captain Fred Abbott, United's senior vice president of flight operations. "The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight."

Navigational Charting App Breaks New Ground: The iPads are loaded with Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck, the industry's premier app featuring interactive, data-driven enroute navigation information and worldwide geo-referenced terminal charts. The enhanced full-color, high-quality information display ensures the right information is displayed at the right time.

"We are proud to partner with United Airlines on a project of this magnitude with Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck," said Mark Van Tine, president and CEO of Jeppesen. "Jeppesen and United share a long and storied history that includes development of numerous innovations for the aviation industry. We look forward to continuing this partnership in integrating our digital mobile solutions that increase efficiency, reduce costs and optimize operations."

Saving 16 Million Sheets of Paper and 326,000 Gallons of Jet Fuel a Year: 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.


Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/United-Airlines-Launches-prnews-3699000897.html

[truthisfreedom]

1. Not sure why they're making this so public. Next thing you know some religious crazies will be

paying hackers to write specialized viruses.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's a great idea, but aside from my first concern, high tech consumer devices have a tendency to fail just when you need them most.

[Tesha]

4. Happily, each officer is likely to have their own unit.

And even in the presence of identical software loads,
complex systems usually don't crash twice in the same
way.

Tesha

[truthisfreedom]

6. Let's hope they only use the iPads for flying, not surfing. n/m

[LanternWaste]

7. I imagine our hope the pilots use of them...

I imagine our hope the pilots using them for their intended purposes is well within the spectrum of realism.

[Retrograde]

10. And if they both fail, they're still in contact with the ground

and if they can't reach ground controls they have really big problems

[Tesha]

2. Yeah, but if the airline would only let their pilots build their own tablets...

...running Linux, then the pilots can upgrade to some
really-kick-ass graphics accelerators...

Tesha

[onehandle]

5. LOL!

funny.

:)

[Diclotican]

3. onehandle

onehandle

I have used it for a while in Flightsim too.. Genious program, easy to have all the sharts, and all the info in one place, without the paper trail.. In "old times" I had a lot of paper to go true, when need arived.. Now I have all I need in the palm on my hand, easy and in collour..

And no, Im not using the defult aircrafts, Im using more advanced tools than that:)

Diclotican

[Blue_Tires]

8. I thought pilots were already using electronic flight bags??

[Angleae]

9. It's only breaking news because it's an IPad

Southwest calls it a performance computer. UPS also uses EFBs (not sure what type).

[Kablooie]

11. Do they have to turn them off during take-off and landing?

[JackRiddler]

12. Just to keep these claims honest: What are the ecological costs of producing an Ipad?

They may be less than the cited resource consumption of the paper system but no effort at comparison has been made. Mining for coltan involves enormous waste, and that's one item of many...