SriLankan leads Asia's race into 'Paperless Flight Decks'

SriLankan Airlines' enters the new age of 'iPad electronic flying' by switching from using bulky mandatory paper manuals, to a sleek 662 gram iPad, as SriLankan becomes Asia's first airline to use the iPad Electronic Flight Bag (EFB). Pilots no longer need to lug 84 kilograms of paper manuals from aircraft to aircraft and from airport to airport and flip through pages, when the process is now streamlined to easy electronic searching.

Flight UL 205 to Muscat was the first flight to be operated utilisingiPad Class 1 EFBs which are Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) that store all the information that are generally available in several paper manuals, physically carried by pilots for reference. The iPad EFB is an information management device displaying data intended primarily for flight-deck or cabin use.

"SriLankan has taken the lead in Asia to revolutionise the flight deck, realising the vision of paperless flying and becoming Asia's first airline to fly with iPad EFBs," said SriLankan Airline Chairman, Nishantha Wickremasinghe.

"SriLankan will be the first customer airline to commence 'digital flying' using the Fokker iPAD CLASS 2 installation, on the Airbus A340, A330 and A320. Effectively, the process will make flying that much easier, more efficient, accurate and greatly help the airline's bottom line, as millions of rupees will be saved," said SriLankan's Chief Executive Officer, Kapila Chandrasena.