United on Tuesday said it is converting its flight decks to be completely paperless and will deploy 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]The iPads will replace paper flight manuals and things like aeronautical navigational charts, which will now be done through an iPad app. Pilots began receiving the iPads earlier this month — all pilots will have the device by the end of the year.

“The paperless flight deck represents the next generation of flying,” said Captain Fred Abbott, United’s senior vice president of flight operations. “The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight.”

Here’s some perspective on what an iPad on the flight deck means.

Each iPad, which weighs less than 1.5 pounds, will replace approximately 38 pounds of paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information in a pilot’s flight bag. A conventional flight bag full of paper materials contains an average of 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot. The green benefits of moving to EFBs are two-fold—it significantly reduces paper use and printing, and, in turn, reduces fuel consumption. The airline projects EFBs will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper a year which is equivalent to more than 1,900 trees not cut down. Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.