How can we Improve the Management of Airworthiness Data throughout the Aircraft Life Cycle?

One of the more important tasks for airlines and MROs today is the usage and management of data. According to a Forbes article, data is one of the most valuable assets a business can have and potentially has a tremendous impact on its long-term success.

Why Is Data Management Important?

A lack of proper data management can result in data silos, inconsistent data sets, and data quality problems that limit the ability of an airline to run for example business intelligence and analytics applications - or even lead to flawed findings.

𝘐𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵, 𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 d𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴. 𝘐𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘺 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘳.

Data enables decision-making that can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance airworthiness compliance.

The importance of Data in Aviation

1. Airworthiness Compliance: Data is crucial for ensuring that aircraft are airworthy, i.e., safe and fit to fly. This information helps airlines ensure that the aircraft meets regulatory requirements and is maintained to the highest standards.

2. Operational Efficiency: Data analytics can be used to monitor and optimize various aspects of aviation operations, such as fuel consumption, maintenance schedules, and flight planning.

3. Predictive Maintenance: Data can be used to predict when equipment is likely to fail, enabling airlines to schedule maintenance proactively, reducing downtime, and avoiding costly repairs.

4. Data Confirms Asset Value: Data is an important aspect that confirms the value of an asset. Data about an aircraft's maintenance history, repair records, operational performance, and other relevant information helps determine the asset value of an aircraft. This information is used by airlines, leasing companies, financiers, and insurance providers to make informed decisions on the purchase, financing, or insurance of aircraft.  

The Aircraft Data Life Cycle

Throughout the life cycle of an aircraft, its data flows across multiple stakeholders, MRO/M&E systems, and sources before reaching its end-of-life. This makes data retrieval time and exchange intensive for engineering. Below are the different stages of data touch points of the aircraft:

1. Delivery of Aircraft: The OEM delivers the aircraft to the airline along with a set of data, such as an aircraft readiness log, maintenance planning documents, manuals, etc. In the coming months and years, many new aircraft deliveries are planned within the industry. The new aircraft deliveries generate an influx of data and make airworthiness compliance even more data-driven.

2. Regulatory Authorities: The regulatory authorities monitor the websites for triggers when a new airworthiness directive is published. The airline must incorporate these directives into the MRO system to ensure airworthiness compliance. The maintenance program must also be approved by the regulatory authorities.

3. Reliability Management: The airline provides reliability data to the OEM and regulatory authorities to maintain the airworthiness of the aircraft. The OEM uses the data to improve the aircraft type.

4. Maintenance: The aircraft requires maintenance during its life cycle, which may be carried out by third-party maintenance providers who use software systems to manage the data.

5. MRO software implementation: The airline may upgrade to a better MRO/M&E system during the life cycle of the aircraft. In this case, all the data must be transferred from the old system to the new system. Often data exist dispersed within the airline in various sources: making standardization and compliance verification a ‘plate of spaghetti’, i.e., all the information might be there but intertwined so that it might only be at the implementation of a new system that one finds if all data is really present and its actual state of quality.

6. Lease hand-back: When the aircraft is redelivered to the lease company, the lease company verifies the records to confirm airworthiness compliance and asset value. The data, including the engine MOD status, damage and repair, and AD/SB status, must be accurate to determine the asset's value.

As the amount of data is increasing and the management of this data is a crucial part, the need for efficient and seamless aircraft data management has never been higher. So how can we improve the management of airworthiness data? The answer is by using software tools that do the job for you and automate the process.

The Tools For The Job

A tool is a device intended to make a task easier. The tool sits between the source system(s)/files and the MRO/M&E system. It is collecting all the information from the different sources, standardizing it, validating it, merging it, and delivering it to the MRO/M&E system. As we have already seen, many different stakeholders want information from the airline for particular use cases. To improve the efficient management of data during the various stages of the aircraft data life cycle, data management tools for integration and migration are a must-have. Ease of data management will be required to satisfy a range of stakeholders. Seamless and efficient aircraft data management is critical to compliance, cost optimization, efficiency, analytics, and predictions.

Identify the tools and people that can do the job

Often the biggest challenge in using data effectively is that the organization’s data owners are not data experts. A critical part will be to provide access to the knowledge and skills the airline needs to manage and understand the data. This could mean putting data management tools in the hands of departments outside of IT and/or getting buy-in from the airline’s leadership to support data initiatives and work with third parties.

Example Data Management Tool

With NEXUS you can manage all your data in aircraft airworthiness critical processes. It is a software solution in conjunction with your MRO/M&E system landscape to manage, collect and exchange data, whilst retaining confidence in data quality and accuracy.

What can NEXUS do for you:

• Prepare and ingest aircraft data to have it all in one place and in the right format

• Conduct automated aircraft phase-ins

• Have full data validation and airworthiness consistency checks

• Have a backfill with OEM data

• Ensure industry and your operator standards are enforced across the whole dataset

• Be able to have continuous Data Health Checks

• Use self-service reports such as maintenance due forecast

• Have interfaces for automatic data exchange

• Use Robotic Process Automation for automatic data uploads and checks