United Airlines Deploying 11,000 iPads to Pilots as Electronic Flight Bags

United Airlines has recently announced that it is going to use iPads as electronic flight bags to replace bulky and heavy flight bags full of navigational charts and other materials and rolling out 11,000 iPads to its pilots. The iPad offers quick and easy access to required data at all times and will streamline work of pilots.

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.