Continental Airlines and United Airlines Get Into The iPad Craze

No more paper flight manuals and navigational charts! Continental Airlines and United Airlines decided to get into the electronic documentation and distribute 11,000 iPads to their pilots.

The airline expects the iPad will replace 38 pounds of documentation per pilot and 16 million pieces of paper each year.

[via Wall Street Journal]

“The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight,” said Captain Fred Abbott, United’s senior vice president of flight operations.

Earlier this year, Alaska Air Group Inc.’s (ALK) namesake airline said it would issue iPad tablets to its pilots to cut down the weight of required flight documents. The shift to iPads has lately been seen across a wide swath of industries; medical firms, for instance, have passed out thousands of iPads to their sales staff to spruce up pitches to doctors.

The move to iPads comes as United Continental continues to integrate its United Airlines and Continental Airlines, which merged in October. Last month, the company reported its second-quarter profit declined 12% amid higher fuel and integration-related costs.