IPads Help Airlines Cast Off Costly Load of Paper; In the Cockpit, Navigation Charts Go Digital; American Sees $1.2 Million in Fuel Savings

June 26, 2013, 7:36 p.m. ET

IPads Help Airlines Cast Off Costly Load of Paper

In the Cockpit, Navigation Charts Go Digital; American Sees $1.2 Million in Fuel Savings

SUSAN CAREY

United Airlines Capt. Jim Barnes, left, and First Officer Greg Battaglia use iPads in the cockpit. United hopes for rules allowing pilots Internet access.

Airline pilots, who fly some of the world’s most technologically advanced machines, have long relied on paper navigation charts and manuals, which clutter the cockpit and have to be lugged around in cases that can weigh as much as a small child.

Now, however, airlines are catching up with the tablet era.JetBlue Airways Corp. JBLU -0.66% said Wednesday that it has received regulatory clearance to provide its 2,500 pilots with Apple Inc. AAPL -1.13% iPads that will store digital copies of the heavy paper manuals they refer to during flights.

Earlier this week, AMR Corp.’s AAMRQ -0.50% American Airlines said its 8,000 pilots had largely gone paperless now that the carrier has completed the rollout of its own iPad program.

By storing manuals and navigation charts on iPads, American figures it has eliminated 3,000 pages of paper per pilot.

Alaska Air Group Inc.’s ALK -1.50% Alaska Airlines, which already uses iPads for pilots’ recurrent training, is schooling its first class of new pilots who will be paperless from the outset. In April, United Continental Holdings Inc. UAL -0.07% started requiring its 10,000 pilots to carry iPads.

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -2.85% said it started an iPad trial with 150 pilots this month and expects to expand it to an additional 550 pilots in the third quarter.

The volume of paper traditionally required by cockpit crews is almost overwhelming in the confines of a cockpit.

Before the start of a flight, pilots typically remove the necessary papers from their bags and affix them to clipboards, a process they call “building the nest.”

When plans changed, the pilots had to root around for the necessary charts in leather flight bags so heavy—often more than 35 pounds—that toting them around was one of American’s biggest sources of pilot injuries, said Capt. Jim Kaiser, the carrier’s managing director of flight operations.

American estimates that removing the bags from all its planes saves about 400,000 gallons of fuel annually, worth $1.2 million at current prices.

Capt. Jim Freeman, a senior Alaska Airlines pilot who has led his airline’s iPad project, said having the approach plates, arrival charts and runway diagrams available at the touch of a tablet is a lot quicker and more user-friendly.

“It’s about information management, the human factors of managing charts,” he said. The change helps pilots be “safe and compliant” and helps the airline run a “better business.”

The shift away from paper comes as airline passengers in the U.S. wait for the Federal Aviation Administration to settle on new rules that could allow fliers to use their tablets and e-readers during all phases of flight, including takeoff and landing.

Unlike passengers’ devices, though, the pilots’ iPads, at least for now, aren’t allowed to connect to the Internet in flight.

But some airlines said linking pilots to the Internet is the long-term goal, provided they can demonstrate that giving pilots access to Wi-Fi doesn’t create electromagnetic interference in the cockpit or otherwise affect safety.

The idea is to let pilots use iPads to receive real-time weather updates and do route planning, said a United Airlines spokeswoman.

JetBlue said it hopes to give its pilots weather data using satellite Wi-Fi technology, which would making weather images much quicker to download.

Airlines have spent years planning the move to tablets, and the iPad has emerged as their tool of choice.

Carriers’ technical experts often worked together with the FAA and conferred with foreign carriers and global safety regulators, said Alaska Airlines’ Capt. Freeman.

The carriers also coordinated with Jeppesen, the leading provider of navigation charts that is now owned by Boeing Co., BA +2.11% as it shifted from paper to electronic data.

American and its pilots union began working on the project in mid-2010.

The carrier won FAA approval to use the tablets on its Boeing 777s in late 2011, and has since secured approval for its other airplane types.

Capt. Kaiser said the pilots still must tote the airline’s Quick Reference Handbook, which is the size of a paperback novel, along with a few en-route navigation charts that haven’t yet been digitized and a “heavy-duty battery backup.”

Alaska Airlines, which employs 1,500 pilots, already allows its first officers to go paperless, and expects FAA approval as early as July for its captains to do so.

The airline has mounted iPad holders on its cockpit walls under the windows next to the pilots’ elbows, and created special plugs to charge the devices in the cockpit. But the airline still stocks hard copies of its Quick Reference Handbook, a bible of emergency checklists, in cockpits.

Kiersten Morvant, one of the new hires training to become an Alaska Airlines first officer, said she loves the new system. She flew for Alaska’s Horizon Air commuter unit for 13 years and toted a big paper-filled leather briefcase.

The best part of the change isn’t the reduced weight, she said, but rather that the iPad can be “synced” on a secure airline server and take in all the new chart and manual information, notices to airmen and other revisions.

Pilots used to have to manually insert those changes in their paper documents, which “could take hours,” she said.

Capt. Freeman of Alaska Airlines said pilots also can create their own lists of “favorites,” approaches and departures they fly often, draw up all the necessary charts to plan for a whole series of flights, and toggle between charts, not to mention having fast access to all variety of aircraft and procedures manuals.

“The iPad app is a bicycle for the mind,” he said

American’s Capt. Kaiser said his company plans eventually to make flight plans accessible on the iPad, replacing another source of clutter.

The paper flight plan for a typical Dallas-to-Tokyo flight, including the aircraft performance data, flight-crew paperwork, weather information and notices to airmen, stretches 28 feet long, he said.