United Airlines is joining the “paperless flight deck” revolution, announcing Tuesday that it is distributing 11,000 iPads to United and Continental pilots to replace bulky paper navigation charts in the cockpit.
The announcement gives further momentum to a movement underway since spring, when the Federal Aviation Administration authorized pilots to use iPads running the Jeppesen Mobile TC navigation app instead of paper maps. FAA spokesman Les Dorr told Macworld on Tuesday that about a dozen airlines—including, perhaps most famously, Alaska Airlines—have made the switch to iPad-based charts.
United and Continental will use a different app—the new Jeppesen Mobile FD application. United said that pilots typically carry 12,000 sheets of paper to chart their course during flights; the introduction of the iPad should save the airline 16 million sheets of paper and, thanks to the reduction in weight, 326,000 gallons of jet fuel per year.
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