6 ms·

Don't forget about the savings for American Airlines. No more paper maintenance manuals, saving lots of weight, on every flight. The ipad powering down will pro

Don't forget about the savings for American Airlines. No more paper maintenance manuals, saving lots of weight, on every flight. The ipad powering down will probably result in a claim to the supplier of the ipads. Of course it is embarrassing, but think of the environmental benefits of saving all that weight.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago
> all that weight A few hundred grams? A few Kg?
- coolnow 12y ago
  Over hundreds of thousands of miles on thousands of flights. It must add up.
- userbinator 11y ago
  According to the link in the article: http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-completes-electronic-flight-bag-implementation http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-compl... 35 pounds, or around 16kg. That is rather heavy... I'm thinking that they should not all carry iPads, but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software but with the same information, for redundancy purposes. The weight of carrying an iPad and backup device is still tiny compared to what it replaced.
  - pmelendez 11y ago
    > , but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software Exactly my thoughts. I am surprised they didn't have any contingency plan as backup.
    - draugadrotten 11y ago
      > they didn't have any contingency plan as backup. Do you have any Source of your claim that there was no contingency plan? FAA regulations seems to indicate that there are plans: "(5) Procedural means. g. Procedural Mitigations. If one or more onboard EFBs fail, resulting in loss of function or the presentation of false or hazardously misleading information, a contingency plan or process will need to be in place to provide the required information." Page 23, http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac%20120-76b.pdf http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/a...
      - pmelendez 11y ago
        The same articles says: "The pilot told us when they were getting ready to take off, the iPad screens went blank, both for the captain and copilot, so they didn’t have the flight plan,” " (emphasis mine) What I meant is taht they didn't have a second electronic contingency plan. Probably they had to switch to paper on those flights (otherwise the impact would have been minimal)
  - Osmium 11y ago
    > and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software but with the same information, for redundancy purposes This sounds like a great idea in theory, but as far as I know in practice isn't ideal. Problems include less familiarity with the second system/more training time required, issues with the second system may not be discovered since it's used less, and less incentive to get the first system right in the first place. What would perhaps be better is a backup running a previous software version, maybe.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  American once boasted they saved $40,000 in fuel costs a year by deleting an olive from the salads in the passenger meals.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Which sounds like BS / urban legend. $40.000 for (generously) 1 gram x 300 passengers = less than a pound per flight? [UPDATE] not sure for fuel, but might be true in olive prices, given these numbers: Their website says 6,700 flights per day. Let's round it to 6000. 6,000 flights a day -> It's 2,190,000 flights a year x 100 meals per flight x 1 olive saved -> 219,000,000 olives saved. This list http://sizes.com/food/olives.htm http://sizes.com/food/olives.htm gives about 80-150 olives per pound (depending on the kind of olives), let's say 120 on average. This makes 219,000,000 olives -> 1,825,000 pounds. If they get them in bulk for like $1 or even $0.1 per pound, that's still an impressive $182,500 saved per year! (Not sure if all flights include meals though. I used 100 meals per flight as a guesstimation could be higher/lower depending on the duration of most flights and the percs included).
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      I don't think it was fuel costs, I think it was olive costs.
    - kayfox 11y ago
      http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removing-one-olive-lead-to-an-airline-saving-thousands-of-dollars http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removin... None of the discussions I found online tried to calculate fuel costs, which is also a major factor in how much that one olive costs.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        This article claims that it takes one extra gallon of fuel for 100 pounds of weight on a domestic airline flight: http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-the-airlines-fuel,10007/ http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-... I don't know how accurate that is, but it passes a basic smell test for me. An olive is about 6 grams, so the per-olive fuel consumption is about 0.0001 gallons. Jet fuel currently costs about $1.70/gallon, so that's about 0.017 cents per olive in fuel. To save $40,000 in fuel per year by reducing olives, you'd be flying about 200 million fewer olives. American flies about 500 million passengers per year, so $40,000 in fuel savings could be achieved with about 0.4 olives saved per passenger. I have no idea if this actually happened, but the numbers look about right!
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  My wife works as cabin crew for a major international airline. A few years ago she was grateful that they abolished the requirement that all crew (an A380 has around 30 crew) had to bring their manuals for every flight. The book was about 3kg and rather bulky so took up most of the room in her flight bag where she was also supposed to keep a jacket, jumper, pair of shoes (they switch from heels when boarding to flats during flight), hat, make up and various bits of documentation.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

> all that weight A few hundred grams? A few Kg?

coolnow 12y ago
Over hundreds of thousands of miles on thousands of flights. It must add up.
userbinator 11y ago
According to the link in the article: http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-completes-electronic-flight-bag-implementation http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/american-airlines-compl... 35 pounds, or around 16kg. That is rather heavy... I'm thinking that they should not all carry iPads, but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software but with the same information, for redundancy purposes. The weight of carrying an iPad and backup device is still tiny compared to what it replaced.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  > , but have one iPad and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software Exactly my thoughts. I am surprised they didn't have any contingency plan as backup.
  - draugadrotten 11y ago
    > they didn't have any contingency plan as backup. Do you have any Source of your claim that there was no contingency plan? FAA regulations seems to indicate that there are plans: "(5) Procedural means. g. Procedural Mitigations. If one or more onboard EFBs fail, resulting in loss of function or the presentation of false or hazardously misleading information, a contingency plan or process will need to be in place to provide the required information." Page 23, http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac%20120-76b.pdf http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/a...
    - pmelendez 11y ago
      The same articles says: "The pilot told us when they were getting ready to take off, the iPad screens went blank, both for the captain and copilot, so they didn’t have the flight plan,” " (emphasis mine) What I meant is taht they didn't have a second electronic contingency plan. Probably they had to switch to paper on those flights (otherwise the impact would have been minimal)
- Osmium 11y ago
  > and one other device from a different manufacturer running different software but with the same information, for redundancy purposes This sounds like a great idea in theory, but as far as I know in practice isn't ideal. Problems include less familiarity with the second system/more training time required, issues with the second system may not be discovered since it's used less, and less incentive to get the first system right in the first place. What would perhaps be better is a backup running a previous software version, maybe.
joezydeco 11y ago
American once boasted they saved $40,000 in fuel costs a year by deleting an olive from the salads in the passenger meals.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Which sounds like BS / urban legend. $40.000 for (generously) 1 gram x 300 passengers = less than a pound per flight? [UPDATE] not sure for fuel, but might be true in olive prices, given these numbers: Their website says 6,700 flights per day. Let's round it to 6000. 6,000 flights a day -> It's 2,190,000 flights a year x 100 meals per flight x 1 olive saved -> 219,000,000 olives saved. This list http://sizes.com/food/olives.htm http://sizes.com/food/olives.htm gives about 80-150 olives per pound (depending on the kind of olives), let's say 120 on average. This makes 219,000,000 olives -> 1,825,000 pounds. If they get them in bulk for like $1 or even $0.1 per pound, that's still an impressive $182,500 saved per year! (Not sure if all flights include meals though. I used 100 meals per flight as a guesstimation could be higher/lower depending on the duration of most flights and the percs included).
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I don't think it was fuel costs, I think it was olive costs.
  - kayfox 11y ago
    http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removing-one-olive-lead-to-an-airline-saving-thousands-of-dollars http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5935/did-removin... None of the discussions I found online tried to calculate fuel costs, which is also a major factor in how much that one olive costs.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      This article claims that it takes one extra gallon of fuel for 100 pounds of weight on a domestic airline flight: http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-the-airlines-fuel,10007/ http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/overweight-passengers-cost-... I don't know how accurate that is, but it passes a basic smell test for me. An olive is about 6 grams, so the per-olive fuel consumption is about 0.0001 gallons. Jet fuel currently costs about $1.70/gallon, so that's about 0.017 cents per olive in fuel. To save $40,000 in fuel per year by reducing olives, you'd be flying about 200 million fewer olives. American flies about 500 million passengers per year, so $40,000 in fuel savings could be achieved with about 0.4 olives saved per passenger. I have no idea if this actually happened, but the numbers look about right!
lucaspiller 11y ago
My wife works as cabin crew for a major international airline. A few years ago she was grateful that they abolished the requirement that all crew (an A380 has around 30 crew) had to bring their manuals for every flight. The book was about 3kg and rather bulky so took up most of the room in her flight bag where she was also supposed to keep a jacket, jumper, pair of shoes (they switch from heels when boarding to flats during flight), hat, make up and various bits of documentation.