According to AppleInsider, James Rogers of The Street has recently interviewed a spokesman from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, who revealed that by replacing heavy flight manual papers with light weight iPads they are now able to save $750,000 annually on fuel alone. Therefore, the U.S. Air Force is now looking to purchase 18,000 more iPads, so it could save more than $50 million in the next 10 years. During the course, Rogers also saw iPad in action and he made it known that with the introduction of Apple’s slate AMC will not be required to print heavy flight manuals any more, which will help them save another $5 million on a yearly basis. Manager of the AMC’s electronic flight bag program, Major Brian Moritz said that Air Force is looking to save $5.7 million during each year by adopting Apple’s iPad.
“We’re saving about 90 pounds of paper per aircraft and limiting the need for each crew member to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper file,” Moritz said. “It adds up to quite a lot of weight in paper.”
The Air Force spent $9.36 million a year ago on 18,000 iPad units for use in the military arm’s cargo aircraft. The 32-gigabyte Wi-Fi-only version of Apple’s touchscreen tablet was purchased with bulk discount from Apple, at a price of around $520 per unit.
About 16,000 third-generation iPad with Retina display units are now in use by AMC crew, according to Rogers. The remaining 2,000 units are said to have been deployed across other Air Force units.”
However, the U.S. Air Force is not the alone in this race, as American Airlines was the first to adopt Apple’s iPad during last year, when the company received formal approval from FAA to use the slate as reciprocal of nearly all maps and manuals a pilot require during the flight.
Nevertheless, like most of the innovations there is a slight drawback of this latest technology as well, as every pilot needs to keep their iPad on during the flight therefore they need batteries which can power the slates for the entire period. Since Apple has not developed such batteries, which can keep the iPads on for 24 hours so pilots carry extra batteries with them. This made FAA felt that it is as redundant as heavy paper manuals.
Let’s hope that soon engineers may find a solution for this problem as well.
Source: iPhoneinCanada
Photo: iDownloadBlog
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