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Qantas to Switch from Paper to IPad Based Documentation
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The Australian airline, Qantas today announced it will partner with Telstra to provide its pilots with iPads for use on the flight deck.
Beginning with Qantas' Boeing 737 fleet, pilots will be able to access a wide range of operational information via iPads rather than using bulky paper documents -- including charts, flight plans, manuals and forms.
Today Qantas prints 18,000 pages of paper for flight operations every day -- the full introduction of iPads will see this reduced to just 3,000 pages. The weight of the paper flight library carried on board will drop by 20 kilograms. Ultimately, more than 2,200 iPads will be distributed to all domestic and international Qantas pilots on all fleet types.
The iPads will be used to keep pilots up-to-date with critical flight data and each one will be equipped with two native apps that have been developed for cockpit use" one for charts by Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen and one by Qantas itself for all other necessary information.
Qantas hopes to begin introducing iPads for pilots by September 2012 subject to regulatory approval. Implementation is expected to take three to four weeks per fleet type with a transition period when certain paperwork is still carried on board, as pilots familiarise themselves with the new systems.
Qantas Technical Pilot, Captain Alex Passerini, said the iPad initiative was "a response to strong demand from our pilots for a simpler, more efficient system, and follows extensive testing and development work, including close consultation with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA)."
Neither company mentioned it in their statements, but reducing the 20kg of weight on every flight adds up over time to not insignificant cost savings in fuel.
Tags: [Australia]
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