Alaska Airlines brings an Apple into the cockpit and ‘Bye, Bye, Flight Bag’ pics

Alaska Airlines announced today that it is eliminating the heavy black flight cases pilots carry around with them by loading all those paper documents onto an iPad. As soon as the announcement hit the wires all the tech blogs jumped onto the news.

Broadband Expert writes that he iPad is loaded with 41 flight manuals, reference cards and other docs.

Chip Hazard reports that Alaska Airlines is the first airline to replace the cockpit flight manuals with the iPad.

Yeac tells us that Alaska Airlines has looked at Kindles and Sony e-readers before settling on Apple’s iPad.

Some blogs are reporting that Alaska Airlines has studied this for four to six months in the cockpit.

Other blogs are reporting that they will finish issueing the iPads by the end of June.

The iPads use the Good Reader app and have are cross-indexed PDF files of the manuals and documents preloaded. Quite a few blogs say the pilots would definitely like to see the navigation maps loaded and the airline is working on that too with their “Bye, Bye, Flight Bag” project.