system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 Why do airline pilots print off large piles of paper on a dot matrix printer at the gate?

What is on those sheets of paper?

Is there not an electronic way to do this?

Do they rip off the edges of the dot matrix paper and call it “printer bacon” like I did when I was little?
gpt
Airline pilot here. TLDR - this is the simple way to produce documents that have to be signed and then copies go to various different places.

Often when we get to the gate we collect the flight plan, weather charts and briefing information. This is mostly laser printed and is a backup to the same content on our company ipads.

The documents that you may see being printed on a dot matrix printer include the loadsheet, fuel receipt, dangerous goods declaration / notice to captain etc. The significance of this is that an impact method printer like dot matrix can be used with carbon paper to produce duplicate/triplicate copies of the document. These particular documents are legal documents that require the captain’s signature on them. Therefore, these documents are printed off, the captains signs on them, then a copy stays with the crew, a copy goes with the dispatcher and a copy gets filed somewhere.

It’s a simple way to evidence what documentation was used for the flight and to ensure there are no discrepancies between what the crew are using and what ops have on record. You can’t really do that with a laser printer or an ipad (at the moment).