Airlines shortening paper trail, but there's a limit

Airlines say they are turning to technology to leave less of a paper trail, processing more boarding passes displayed on passengers' cell phones and allowing pilots to shed bulky paper flight manuals for electronic versions.

But there's a limit to the "greening" of airport gates.

Before every flight, agents still produce lengthy printouts on old-school, dot-matrix printers that spit out everything from the flight plan and weather forecasts to all special passenger requirements on a single lengthy printout. Pilots receive the printouts.

"I'm five feet tall, and when I hold it up, it can be as tall as I am or longer. They can be 20 feet long," said Debra Gula, a Pittsburgh-based gate agent for US Airways who lives in Center.

Such lengths can add up. U.S. airlines made 10 million domestic and international flights last year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The preflight printouts are made for all of them.

If all the printouts were the size of Gula, the paper churned out in a single year by U.S. airlines would stretch almost 9,500 miles. It would be the equivalent of more than 50 million sheets of standard-sized paper.

"We would really like to eventually get to the point where we wouldn't have to print out that much paper, but we're just not there yet. We don't have the systems in place to be able to do that yet," said Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association, a trade group for major U.S. airlines.

Day knew of no airlines taking steps to eliminate the paper printouts and produce them electronically. Doing so would require Federal Aviation Administration testing and approval, a process that could take several years, she predicted.

US Airways spokesman Todd Lehmacher, a former commercial pilot, agreed. "A lot of the paper is necessary from a safety standpoint," he said. "It has backup information needed to carry out the flight in case there are any electronic glitches."

Yet, there are several examples of airlines working to rely less on paper.

Three years ago, the Transportation Security Administration started a pilot program at Los Angeles International Airport that allowed American Airlines passengers to receive boarding passes electronically on their cell phones or personal digital assistants. Participating passengers could get the electronic image of their pass scanned to get through security checkpoints and airline gates.

As of August, the pilot program involved seven airlines at 102 airports, the TSA said. American, US Airways and Delta Air Lines offer paperless boarding at Pittsburgh International Airport.

"I travel all the time and am never near a printer, so this is a godsend," said Terrance Glover, 43, of Phoenix, after flashing a bar code displayed on his iPhone under a scanner on Friday morning at Pittsburgh International.

"I've been using this since the minute it started, and I've never had any problems," Glover said.

Glover was one of just three passengers on a Phoenix-bound flight who used paperless boarding. Three other passengers used it on a New York-bound flight that boarded at a nearby gate minutes later.

The TSA said it does not track the percentage of passengers who use paperless boarding. Likewise, airlines would not divulge participation among their passengers for competitive reasons.

"There are two numbers in the percentage, I can say that," said Delta Air Lines spokesman Paul Skrbec. He said usage has grown dramatically since the airline began offering a smartphone application a year ago.

For Delta, which started its paperless boarding program two years ago and now offers it in 78 cities, the service is about more than cutting down on paper use.

"We're building our strategy to reach customers in the mediums they want to be in. (Reducing paper use) is an added benefit, but really it's all about customer convenience," Skrbec said.

More pilots are enjoying the convenience of not having to lug paper flight manuals around. The hulking books ? which include navigational charts, operating manuals, logbooks, flight checklists and other reference materials ? can weigh 40 pounds or more and include more than 10,000 pages.

Several airlines are looking at electronic alternatives. United Airlines has begun supplying its 11,000 pilots with iPads that will be used to replace the paper manuals. It says the move saves almost 16 million sheets of paper and, by reducing the weight of the paper manuals, saves 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year.

US Airways is installing electronic manuals in cockpits of about 40 planes as part of an FAA pilot program. Delta is among those testing electronic alternatives internally.