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United Airlines has announced it is converting to paperless flight decks and deploying 11,000 iPads to all United and Continental pilots. This is yet another sign that tablets - and in particular Apple's iPad - are changing the way people access and interact with content. We've already extensively covered how iPads have impacted the magazine and newspaper industries, but nowadays it's even more interesting to track how iPads are impacting non-content industries.

United is labeling the iPad manual an "electronic flight bag" (EFB). It will completely replace paper flight manuals for all pilots by the end of this year. In addition, the pilots will use an iPad app to replace paper aeronautical navigational charts. Below we check out a short video of what United pilots will see, plus some screenshots.

Seattle based travel startup Yapta.com re-launched its homepage today as a full-service air travel search engine. Yapta originally launched in May 2007 as a browser add-on for bookmarking flight information and tracking price developments. The new site has retained this focus, but moved it away from the extension and made all of its core functions available on the homepage as well.

With the airlines cutting back their service in every imaginable way while raising their prices simultaneously, Yapta offers travelers another tool to at least try to save some money on their trips.