Open up your mind and say, ahh...

SOMEWHERE OVER MONTANA — I’m sitting aboard a Boeing 737-800 burning a biofuel blend, en route to Washington, D.C. It’s the first of what Alaska Airlines says will be 75 flights made with biofuel during the next month.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the flight is that it isn’t that exciting. The 20 percent biofuel blend fueling the turbofan engines burns just like conventional jet fuel. It’s no different for the pilots or the passengers, for whom it’s just another flight to D.C. And for Alaska Airlines, the ho-hum nature of the flight is one of the big points the company is trying to make.

There have been many biofuel demonstration flights during the past few years, with everything from fighter jets to 747s burning the stuff. But they’ve typically been demonstration flights without passengers. That’s changing as airlines begin regularly scheduled flights. Lufthansa has flown several flights in Europe using a biofuel blend, and United Airlines made a biofuel passenger flight Monday, a first for a domestic carrier.

But Alaska is taking a bigger step into alt-fuels with a plan to make 75 biofuel-powered flights this month. The company wanted to go beyond demonstration flights to show the fuel can be used right now, without any issues or challenges. The biofuel is produced by Dynamic Fuels in Louisiana using feedstock derived from used cooking oil and the byproducts from meat production. The biofuel meets the exact same standards as normal jet fuel.

“It’s chemically indistinguishable from Jet A,” Alaska Airlines VP Keith Loveless said at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport before the flight departed. “It’s just the feedstock that differs.”

Delta Air Lines customers will now get destination-specific Living Social deals related to their trips thanks to a new deal between the two companies.

The arrangement, announced Friday, means that customers who book a flight and visit My Trips on Delta.com will be offered deals specific to their itineraries. For instance, if a customer booked a four-day visit to Los Angeles, she would likely receive offers for hotel and travel deals in that city.

The deal helps underpin Delta’s image as a social media innovator in the industry. Delta began selling flights directly on Facebook last August.

Other airlines are also trying to embrace the digital revolution as well. In May, Alaska Airlines replaced its pilots’ 25-pound paper flight manuals with iPads, while American Airlines began giving first class passengers Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets on some flights. Virgin America has also made Google’s Chromebooks available on some flights, has given a plane a Twitter hashtag name and has offered free flights to consumers with high Klout scores.

From the earliest days of aviation, pilots have relied upon paper maps to help find their way. Even in an era of GPS and advanced avionics, you still see pilots lugging around 20 pounds or more of charts. But those days are numbered, because maps are giving way to iPads.

The Federal Aviation Administration is allowing charter company Executive Jet Management to use Apple’s tablet as an approved alternative to paper charts. The authorization follows three months of rigorous testing and evaluation of the iPad and Mobile TC, a map app developed by aviation chartmaker Jeppesen.

The latest decision applies only to Executive Jet Management, but it has implications for all of aviation. By allowing the company’s pilots to use the Apple iPad as a primary source of information, the FAA is acknowledging the potential for consumer tablets to become avionics instruments.

The iPad has been popular with pilots of all types since its introduction last year. But until now, it could not be used in place of traditional paper charts or FAA-approved devices such as more expensive, purpose built electronic flight bags. The iPad was OK for reference, but not as a pilot’s sole source of information. The new FAA authorization changes all that.

To receive FAA authorization, Jeppesen and Executive Jet Management went through a rigorous approval process. It included rapid-decompression testing from a simulated altitude of 51,000 feet and ensuring the tablet will not interfere with critical navigation or electronic equipment.

Executive Jet tested the iPad and Mobile TC in 10 aircraft flown by 55 pilots during 250 flights.

The first thought many pilots, not to mention passengers, will have is: What happens if the iPad or the app crashes?

Jeff Buhl, Jeppesen’s product manager for the Mobile TC app, says the Apple iOS operating system and the app proved “extremely stable” during testing. In the “unlikely” event of a crash, he says, it takes but a moment to get them running again.

“The recovery time for an application crashing or the OS crashing is extremely rapid,” Buhl says. During the evaluation period with the FAA, the production app did not crash. But even if it did, Buhl says it’s ready to go again “in 4-6 seconds from re-launch to previous state.”

The FAA says each individual operator — in this case Executive Jet Management — must develop specific procedures for dealing with system or software crashes and other issues. Under the authorization, Executive Jet Management will require a second approved electronic device, which most likely will be another iPad, in the cockpit.

Although this authorization applies to just one company, it is a milestone for all operators, including major airlines, because it opens the door for them to embrace the iPad. Though any company wishing to follow Executive Jet’s lead will have to endure equally rigorous scrutiny by the FAA.

Agency spokesman Les Dorr says the process is no different from what is required for any other electronic device (.pdf) used to display navigation information.

“As far as the iPad is concerned, we do that on a case-by-case basis when an airline applies to be able to use it,” Dorr says.

The FAA is already seeing more requests to use the iPad in the cockpit. Alaska Airlines began testing the iPad back in November and there are about 100 pilots currently evaluating the device according to spokeswoman Marianne Lindsey. She says in addition to the convenience, there is a practical weight saving aspect to using the iPad as well, “it’s replaced about 25 pounds of manuals and charts.”

Jeppesen’s director of portfolio management, Tim Huegel, says several carriers are looking into using the iPad and TC Mobile, and with the FAA granting one approval, it should become increasingly easy for others to follow Executive Jet’s lead.

“We’ll be able to reuse a lot of the documentation and the lessons learned working with Executive Jet Management to help our commercial customers as they now begin to pursue FAA authorization,” he says.

The charts available with Mobile TC include charts for visual flight rules and for instrument flight rules, which are more commonly used by commercial operators. The app only shows an electronic version of the paper charts Jeppesen has been producing for years, but Huegel says future versions could incorporate the iPad’s GPS capability.

He sees a day when tablets provide “door-to-door management” of a pilot’s information, from crew scheduling to weather information to navigation charts.

Photo: The Mobile TC app on an iPad. (Jim Merithew/Wired.com)