But, American Airlines insists there are a lot of benefits to using Apple’s tablets as opposed to paper. First and foremost, the iPad replaces 45 pounds worth of paper for each pilot on a plane. If American is able to use iPads on every flight — its eventual goal — it stands to reduce its fuel usage by 500,000 gallons each year.

“That’s a significant savings,” said David Clark, the American pilot that is heading up the iPad effort. For the past six months, American has been testing iPad use on 777 flights out of Los Angeles–some 300 flights in all.

As of last Friday, American has approval to use the iPads on all of its Boeing 777 aircraft for all phases of flight and Clark said the airline expects approval to use the tablets on 737s next year.

To answer every frequent flyer’s question, no, Clark isn’t really sure why the rest of us can’t use our iPads during takeoff and landing.

“I think that’s a fair and a good question,” Clark said. “First and foremost, the FAA makes the rules and we follow them.”

That being said, though, Clark notes that American Airlines did a lot of testing with the iPad and it is used only with all of its transmitting functions — including WiFi — turned off. At the back of the plane, Clark said, there can be any number of devices in use by dozens of passengers, making it hard to test for every possible scenario.

As for the pilots and their iPads, Clark said everything has gone swimmingly, Clark said. In general, even those who have never touched an iPad only need a half-hour or hour of training.

“That speaks to the operating system,” Clark said.

Nonetheless, pilots that want to carry paper manuals for a bit will be able to do so. During the six months of testing, paper backups were carried on every flight.

American also makes sure that the iPads are fully charged and properly loaded before each flight.

As to concerns that pilots will be playing games rather than reviewing flight manuals, Clark says not to worry.

“Absolutely not – no Angry Birds in flight,” he said. Indeed, there are only two apps loaded on the iPads — the customized program for reading flight charts and a PDF reader for reviewing the plane’s manual, if needed.

According to a confidential study unearthed by ABC News, a study by the International Air Transport Association trade group found some 75 incidents of potential interference reported between 2003 and 2009. They involved interference with everything from flight controls to navigation to communications systems. The type of device suspected of causing interference varied, though the most commonly cited likely troublemaker was the cellphone.

Cellphone use is, of course, banned by the FAA during flights, though many people forget to turn off their devices or willingly ignore the warnings. It is increasingly common to hear a cellphone ring or an alert chirp well after take-off.

Even more irksome to some is the requirement to shut down non-transmitting devices, such as iPods and Kindles. Those devices are allowed during flight, but not during takeoff or landing, even though some airlines are starting to replace their flight manuals with iPads.

The best part about this story was the reaction I got from boss Kara Swisher when I summarized it on our story list.

“Uh-oh,” she wrote. “I call Walt all the time from a plane. Only place AT&T worked.”

The good news for her fellow travelers is she now has a Verizon iPhone and, perhaps as a result of this article, extra scrutiny from her future flight crews.

(photo credit: Flickr/Brentdpayne)

A man hiking in a remote part of Mammoth Lakes in California’s Sierra Nevada found a pilot’s license and an FAA card, both bearing the name of aviator Steve Fossett.

Authorities are now trying to verify the IDs and other items for authenticity. No human remains or plane pieces were found nearby so far, although a fleece pullover and some money were also retrieved in the same area.

The discovery is about 50 miles away from Nevada desert locations where teams had been searching for the well-known adventurer, who vanished while on a solo flight in a single-engine Bellanca Super Decathlon a year ago.

It has been assumed that Fossett, who has since been declared legally dead, crashed, and the search for him was suspended a month ago.

After Fossett’s disappearance, tens of thousands of Web users mounted an unusual online search mission, studying satellite photographs of a huge swath of ground.

The images were uploaded by Amazon (AMZN) to its Mechanical Turk, in an attempt to find a possible crash site.

Google Earth (GOOG) was also used in the effort, which is called “crowdsourcing.”

The Turk was also used in another unsuccessful search for Microsoft (MSFT) techie Jim Gray, who went missing on a boat off the coast of California.

Computer-aided image-scanning technology has also been used in the search for Fossett, to no avail, until this very old-school break was made.