Same deal with Air NZ. Paper manuals for the endorsement- "training copies" that have to be returned at the end of the course.
If I'd known that there were not to be any paper manuals issued, I'd have kept the "training" ones and printed the amendments off the CD on a company printer (part of the deal of having CDs is that you can print off stuff at work if you want to)
I agree with previous comments regarding the unsuitability of the pdf format - it is a "dumb" format, in that you can't link from topic to topic, or manual to manual. The seach function is useful but overall it is far less user-friendly than proper paper manuals.
The criticsm of Jetstar for using CDs is a little unreasonable. as they are certainly not the only operator to do so. Charging for manuals is a bit rich though.
Times are changing, and not always for the better.