Increasingly airlines are switching to the iPad for operating manuals, safety checklists, logbooks for entering airplane performance data, navigation charts, weather information and airport diagrams.

Counting both the pilot and co-pilot, that would remove 60 pounds of paper from the cockpit, a significant savings not only in paper and printing costs but also in fuel because planes are that much lighter.

“The iPad allows pilots to quickly and nimbly access information,” said Jim Freeman, a pilot and director of flight standards at Alaska Airlines, which has given iPads to all its pilots. “When you need to a make a decision in the cockpit, three to four minutes fumbling with paper is an eternity.”

The iPad cuts about 25 pounds of paper from a pilots flight bag. The e-manuals include hyperlinks and color graphics to help pilots find information quickly and easily. And pilots do not have to go through the tedium of updating the manuals by swapping out old pages with new ones because updates are downloaded automatically. The subscriptions to paper maps and charts can cost approximately $1,414 per pilot a year, whereas with the iPad pilots can gets the same maps and charts digitally delivered to their iPads for $150 a year.

There are now more than 250 aviation apps for the iPad, and one called ForeFlight is among the top grossing apps listed on iTunes. Boeing and Garmin have also jumped into the iPad flight apps business providing pilots with digital versions of the aircraft, equipment and operating manuals as well as a complete copy of F.A.A. rules and regulations.

Switching to the iPad is also expected to reduce health care costs and absenteeism from shoulder and back injuries associated with hoisting heavy flight bags, according to David Clark, pilot and manager of the connected aircraft program at American Airlines. “Cockpits are small, and lifting that thing up and over your seat causes damage, particularly when you consider a lot of pilots are over 40.”