iPads on the flight decks of Alaska Airlines aircraft

Shedding 50 lbs per aircraft is not bogus. Over the course of thousands of flight hours on several hundred Jets the fuel savings for even one year is significant. Add the additional savings realized by not employing added staffers to "stuff" pilot mailboxes with manual revisions several times a month and the numerous back injuries and associated costs caused by lifting a 50 lb bag over the outside of the seat, you are talking about real money.

My airline swapped the metal covers on our aircraft logbooks, took out the life preservers on non-overwater aircraft, and is converting to lighter weight serving carts all in an effort to shed weight. Every pound is $$$ in added fuel burn.

We are also testing iPads on some of our international fleets.

I hope they are better at FlightControl than I am.

Alaska Airlines is only loading the aircraft and company manuals into the iPads. Using the Jeppesen Mobile TC approach chart application which contains airport diagrams, departure, arrival and approach procedures, requires that the class one device be secured for takeoff and landing. This can be accomplished by using a knee pad device.

Many of the newer aircraft, Boeing 777 have electronic checklists that are built into the flight management system and can be displayed on a computer screen on the instrument panel. The normal checklist for aircraft such as the Boeing 737 fit nicely on a laminated card. I would much rather have the non-normal and emergency procedures on an iPad then trying to find the correct procedure in a dark cockpit using a paper QRH (Quick Reference Handbook). In a real emergency they are just not that quick.

The cockpit can be supplied with the same power ports that are in the passenger compartment to charge the iPad in flight and the cockpit system could be connected to a 30 minute rechargeable standby battery pack.

I'm not a pilot nor do I work for any airlines, but shouldn't class 1 electronics in possession of the pilot be exempt from stowing? From my understanding, much of the point of stowing electronic devices during takeoff and landing is because these are critical points of the flight where something could go wrong. Passengers need to be alert to what the flight attendants are saying in the event of an emergency - being distracted during such a time or even spending a few seconds stuffing your iPad in a bag could be the difference between life and death. Not to mention that the airline doesn't want to get sued if they hit a bump on the tarmac, sending a passenger's iPad into the nearest wall or neighbor.

As for turning off electronics, as far as I know, that's still up in the air (no pun intended...). Read Boeing's analysis of EMI via PED here: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere_textonly.html. It seems to me that the purpose of turning off/stowing all electronic devices is because the hundreds of thousands of passengers can't be trusted to know what to do in an emergency, while the several hundred pilots CAN because they're trained and certified. Even if there was some kind of interference in-flight, the pilot would be able to confirm/fix it by simply turning the device off. In relation to this article, I think it would be beneficial for Alaska Airlines to allow iPads on the flight deck to be used at all times for flight purposes.

And yeah, I agree that saving money because they don't have one, or even two 50-lb flight bags on board is kind of bogus. Maybe if every member of the flight crew had 50-lb bags that would be replaced by a single iPad... As for the glare factor that Rick Maddy pointed out, I would imagine this could be solved by using an anti-glare screen protector. All in all though, I think it's great to see older industries evolving to embrace new technology.

I'm not sure I like this idea. Paper maps don't run out of batteries or malfunction. Do they have a backup plan, like always carrying TWO iPads?

While I think this is pretty cool I have some thoughts as a private pilot.

This article (but not the Engadget article) states the iPads need to be stowed during take-off and landing. But take-off and landings are critical times for using checklists. I'm guessing these particular checklists will still need to be paper then.

Readability in sunlight and with sunglasses. The glass panels on the instrument panel are non-glare screens with a very high output that is readable in full sunlight. The iPad screens are neither.

I'd be interested to hear how using an iPad to find an emergency checklist in a time of crisis works out compared to getting the same checklist in a traditional bound manual. Without any doing any of my own tests I'm not sure which is easier.

Personally I'd prefer to carry a single iPad over a big bag full of manuals and charts. As long as the pilots aren't playing Angry Birds or surfing the web using the aircraft's WiFi this should be a step in the right direction.

This is really cool.

But using fuel savings as a justification (vs. cost to reprint paper pubs each time they change or some other benefit) seems strange to me. I'd really like to know how much money they'll save per year taking 50lb off of their jets. I'm pretty sure their 737's usually take off weighing somewhere around (100k lbs...give or take 50k or so depending on how long the leg is and how much fuel is on board). I'm not convinced reducing that by 50lbs will make a big difference. Although I guess a small savings added to every flight over the course of a year might add up.