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Emirates Flights Going Paperless to Save Fuel

by Terrence O'Brien on July 24, 2008 at 02:07 PM



United-Arab-Emirates-based Emirates Airlines has decided to banish all paper reading materials from flights on their brand new Airbus A380 jumbo jets. Pre-printed materials like magazines, pamphlets, and shopping catalogs (goodbye Skymall!) will no longer be available on planes. Instead, content that was previously in those printed publications and pamphlets will show up on the LCD video screens at every seat.

The removal of paper will lighten the load the plane is carrying by one ton -- each seat holds approximately four pounds of paper and the A380 has 500 seats. Do the math and it's quite obvious that this lighter load will greatly extend the range of the double-decker jets. Of course, those video screens at every seat must weigh more than the magazines, so go figure...The good news, for people who hate to read on smalls screens, is that Emirates has some of the biggest LCD video screens in the airline biz (about 10.3-inches in Economy alone).

Ultimately, Emirates hopes to lighten the plane's load by five tons, which would allow the airline to offer nonstop flights from Dubai to Los Angeles and San Francisco. The inaugural flight of the new paperless A380 will be on August 1st, with a trip from Dubai to New York City.

Considering the marathon length of these planned super-long-haul nonstop flights, let's just hope they haven't removed the paper from the restrooms. [Source: Times Online]

Tags: airbus, airlines, airplane, business, emirates, paperless, plane, travel, uae

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