United Pilots To Use iPads For Navigation

bonch writes "Pilots of United and Continental will ditch flight manuals and charts in favor of 11,000 iPads containing the same data in app form. Replacing 38 pounds of paper materials, the iPads will run an app called Mobile FliteDeck from Jeppesen, a provider of software navigation tools. Alaska Airlines adopted iPads back in May. United estimates a savings of 326,000 gallons of fuel a year due to the lighter load."

Comments

Fuel Savings

[cforciea]

United estimates a savings of 326,000 gallons of fuel a year due to the lighter load.

And how many gallons of fuel a year are used making all of those 11,000 iPads and shipping them from China?

Re:Fuel Savings

[gman003]

Exactly. Besides, commercial shipping's quite likely to be via container ship, which is a much more efficient way than flying it.

And when you factor in the environmental cost of the paper (which needs replacement every so often for updates or repair), it start to look like a relatively decent idea, ecologically.

(Mostly commenting to undo a misclicked moderation, but there's my $0.02)

Re:Cool! So I guess we can purchase

[shugah]

Pilot: What's the procedure for a hot restart on a PW4062A at 10,000m?

Co-Pilot: Wait a minute, I just have to find where I downloaded that manual ... WTF? What's a mobi file and why can't my Kobo reader open it?

Pilot (grabs iPad): You idiot! Just get the ePub version and use iBooks!

Co-Pilot: Don't hold it that way it fucks up the antenna!

Pilot: That's the iPhone4 not the iPad

Co-Pilot: Oh yeah. Hey! where the hell are we?

Pilot: How the fuck should I know, this is the WiFi version with no fucking GPS!