A Pilot Kit for the 21st Century

For years, pilots have been carrying around their pilot kit.

What is in a pilot kit? Well, during the first day of ground school as a pilot, you are handed a stack of books. One book to describe how to fly the airplane, another book to describe the systems on the airplane, another book of company procedures, regulations and rules to follow…you get the idea. Oh wait…then there are all of the navigation charts that have all of the procedures and instructions on how to fly in and out of each individual airport.

An airport for a city like Memphis might have close to 50 pages of charts. For a pilot flying around the world, the navigation charts alone can add up to several thousand pages. Unlike general aviation, airlines like FedEx are governed by more strict rules regarding the information that must be available on the aircraft, which means lots and lots of paper.

But then there was the fun part—revisions! All of the information mentioned above changed every few weeks. Removing and replacing individual pages, reprinting entire manuals, distributing them to pilots throughout the world was a bi-weekly ritual here at FedEx. We shipped and sent the equivalent of several phone books to our pilots every year and we also kept copies of the information on-board the aircraft for reference by our crews. The pilot kit on a FedEx MD11 aircraft that can fly to any corner of the earth weighed in at a hefty 125 pounds.

Just like you’ve probably abandoned your old heavy phone books because you can look up information digitally now, FedEx is doing the same thing. In addition to on-aircraft computer access to digital information, we’ve finished distributing over 4,300 iPads to all our pilots so they can access all necessary information onscreen, and now we’re in the process of taking all the paper kits off all the airplanes in our fleet. It’s a lot of paper--- 32 TONS worth!

What you see in the photos here is just a small part of it, stacked under one of our vintage Falcons at one of our training centers in Memphis. We’ll be recycling all of it, of course, as part of our EarthSmart commitment to sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint in responsible and resourceful ways. Removing this paper from our aircraft is the equivalent of removing 780 cars from the road every year that drive 12,000 miles per year and get 20 miles per gallon.

Paper removal is a first step. Beyond simply reproducing paper manuals on a computer, it is key to FedEx that our pilot kit provides the “right information at the right time” to our pilots every day, so they can make the safest and most efficient decisions possible before, during, and after their flights.