More and more operations are seeing the benefit of meshing their MRO software with their flight operations IT solutions. Together, the two offer more synergy than perhaps any other pairing to ensure safety, efficiency and profitability. We will take a look at how these two seemingly disparate products can work together to create amazing synergy.
IFS and Lockheed Martin announced a joint partnership to promote products and services to help aerospace and defense organizations maximize the value of their enterprise software investments, modernize their equipment maintenance and support processes, and keep assets mission-ready.
IFS and Lockheed Martin have worked together for a number of years. In 2021, IFS and Lockheed Martin were both selected by the U.S. Navy to deliver an intelligent maintenance solution to power the streamlining of multiple legacy systems into a single, fully digitized and insight-driven logistics system. The solution comprises capabilities for planning and executing maintenance, repair and overhaul of more than 3,000 assets, including aircraft, ships and land-based equipment.
This new agreement will build on the success of the two companies. IFS software will be made available in the Lockheed Martin Innovation Demonstration Center located at its Training and Logistics Solutions facility in Orlando, Florida. Additionally, IFS and Lockheed Martin will collaborate on bid processes for customer opportunities, as well as share technology roadmaps to align their technology offerings for aerospace and defense customers.
“This agreement builds upon a key relationship with one of the world’s leading A&D manufacturers and defense contractors,” said Scott J. Helmer, aerospace and defense president, IFS. “It will provide both organizations with strong alignment on complementary solutions and services to help A&D organizations ensure Total Asset Readiness.”
Reeves Valentine, vice president of land and maritime solutions at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems, added: “At Lockheed Martin, we develop highly-tailored solutions to help our customers achieve their critical missions,” He added: “Delivering digital tools that feature intuitive interfaces, streamlined workflows and AI-powered features keeps our military ahead of evolving threats. This partnership with IFS combines both companies’ efforts to ensure our customers have the most innovative defense capabilities.”
There is no doubt that Maintenance & Engineering (M&E)/MRO software platforms are improving the quality, speed, and compliance of airline maintenance programs worldwide. The evidence can be found in the five following MRO IT (information technology) case studies below. All provide indisputable proof that the integration, monitoring, and management of an airline’s MRO functions using end-to-end software solutions is the right move for any carrier to make, no matter how large or small they may be.
Aerogility Making Life Easier for easyJet
When easyJet wanted to update its MRO IT platform, the company turned to Aerogility (www.aerogility.com). In fact, easyJet was the first airline to implement the Aerogility platform. “It employs a model-based artificial intelligence (AI) to create a digital twin of an airline’s fleet and sustainment operations,” said Phil Cole, Aerogility’s airline business manager. “Over the past five years, easyJet has been utilizing Aerogility daily across its entire maintenance operation. Feedback from this extensive use has enabled us to create new and improved interactive planning tools and capabilities.”
For the record, model-based AI “is a predictive tool that enables the user to interrogate the data and the output conclusions,” said www.aerogility.com. “It operates according to a behavioral model, where each key element in a business or organizational system — such as an asset, a facility or a decision-maker — can be represented as an agent and configured to act in a particular way. The model is the result of these individual agents operating and interacting with each other to create accurate simulations.”
When it comes to MRO IT support, “Aerogility uses model-based AI to create a digital twin of an airline’s fleet and sustainment operations,” Cole said. A ‘digital twin’ is a real-time virtual replica of the airline’s aircraft and other physical assets, constantly modified by collected onboard performance and diagnostic to keep it in line with its ‘physical twin’.
The real power of a digital twin for aircraft maintenance is its ability to be used by an AI-enabled platform to project maintenance trends and possible responses into the future. “With its agent-based nature, Aerogility allows users to quickly alter planning parameters and create what-if scenarios for instant side-by-side comparison,” said Cole. “You can use this virtual representation to conduct forecast planning while considering constraints such as peak period shutdowns and limited MRO capacity/capabilities. This allows our customers to make more informed decisions and optimize operations, to improve efficiency and reduce costs.”
Back to easyJet. According to Phil Cole, the airline layered Aerogility on top of its existing MRO management and transactional systems, using these connections and its model-based AI engine to help them interpret their MRO data to make better and more useful maintenance decisions, in a faster and more timely manner.
“Implementing Aerogility involves seeding the model with a simple CSV export from any management information system (MIS) into the Aerogility model, replacing the current plan with Aerogility’s solution,” he explained. “A key aspect of Aerogility is its ease of integration with surrounding systems. For example, if modifications are required to an airline’s MIS, this will have no impact on Aerogility’s implementation.”
With Aerogility in place, easyJet has been able to make better, more informed MRO decisions for its fleet. This is true for day-to-day operations, as well as for scheduled heavy base, mid-term, landing gear and powerplant maintenance procedures. “Using Aerogility in our engine shop visit program has significantly helped to simplify the process of producing our engine shop visit plan,” said Alejandro Lopez Ruesca, easyJet’s head of powerplant. “It is a great piece of software; very user-friendly, incredibly fast, with support provided by an always helpful group of people.”
“easyJet’s improved visibility into its maintenance operations is common to Aerogility users,” Cole noted. The reason: “Most of our customers convert to Aerogility from manual and labor-intensive solutions, such as spreadsheets or project management tools, which prove limiting when scaling their fleet,” he said. “These solutions often result in a lack of understanding and collaborative planning among groups, teams and departments, with a heavy reliance on individual employees.”
This airline is certainly happy with its decision to implement Aerogility to manage its fleet.
“Aerogility has provided us with an essential tool to help deliver our business strategy — to drive down costs and maximize the number of aircraft available to our customers,” said Swaran Sidhu, easyJet’s head of fleet technical management. “We are really excited by the enhanced maintenance forecasting and planning capabilities this gives our team.”
EmpowerMX Empowers EAMS and Others
When Embraer Aircraft Maintenance Services (EAMS) of Nashville, Tenn., wanted to upgrade their MRO IT system, they selected EmpowerMX (empowermx.com). “EAMS was looking for a solution to improve technician efficiencies and reduce late deliveries,” said Levi Schmidt, EmpowerMX’s managing director of customer excellence. “EmpowerMX specializes in planning and execution of aircraft maintenance during line visits and heavy checks. To optimize these processes, we also offer full material solutions, integrations, and 100% paperless options.”
Moving EAMS to this MRO software required some investigative work on the part of EmpowerMX. To make it happen, “we needed to understand their current processes and application needs,” Schmidt said. “Part of the migration process included data mapping so things like skill codes, task types, crew structures, and department workflows were all familiar to the teams working the projects.”
“Where EAMS was instrumental was in realizing that all tools require proper use,” he added. “Their implementation specialist, who would ultimately become EAMS’ internal subject matter expert (SME), had a background in aviation maintenance from several perspectives, including project management, lead technician, and technician. As well, they were a part of that company’s Continuous Improvement team. This elevated their ability to implement EmpowerMX at EAMS and deliver the desired results.
Like EAMS, many customers have seen positive outcomes after successfully implementing EmpowerMX solutions. To learn more about these successes, case studies are available on the EmpowerMX website (www.empowermx.com/resources). These case studies illustrate how the four pillars of business success—safety, quality, delivery, and cost — have been improved in each.
EmpowerMX has been proven to be effective in improving safety and quality, with one group demonstrating a 50% reduction in injuries, two groups showing a 42% and 55% reduction in paperwork and dock errors, and the last group showing a 25% reduction in quality escapes.
In all case studies, delivery was an important metric as customers expect to receive their aircraft or component back in a timely manner. The first case study saw a dramatic decrease in delayed deliveries, from 67% to just 10%. The second case study also saw a significant decrease in delayed deliveries, from 62% to less than 5%. One case study even reported 100% of aircraft delivered on time for six out of seven months, demonstrating the effectiveness of the strategies implemented.
Within the first two years of implementation, customers reported at least 10% efficiency gains, contributing to a reduction in delayed aircraft. This allowed one case study to add an additional heavy check line without hiring additional resources, while another case study used their efficiency gains of 16% to increase throughput and generate additional revenue without adding any resources.
EXSYN Aviation Solutions and Malaysia Airlines Collaborate for Enhanced Success
Embracing the philosophy of perseverance, Malaysia Airlines recognized the need for a more effective Maintenance & Engineering (M&E) software solution after initial implementation fell short of their expectations. Determined to achieve optimal results, the airline sought the expertise of EXSYN Aviation Solutions (www.exsyn.com) for their comprehensive support in ensuring the seamless operation of Malaysia Airlines’ M&E/AMOS (Aircraft Maintenance & Engineering System) platform. Together, these two entities joined forces to propel the airline towards greater success.
EXSYN has to find and fix a number of problems to get to this point. “For instance, the airline’s component configurations and statuses were being tracked over multiple programs, making it challenging to provide a holistic overview of these components’ airworthiness status,” said Rob Vermeij, head of operations at EXSYN Aviation Solutions. “This situation resulted in potential human errors and discrepancies in airworthiness data despite their best efforts, which is not uncommon in the industry.” As well, Malaysia Airlines faced difficulties with inter-departmental communications, which led to ineffective project decisions, outputs and results.
To address these and other problems, EXSYN began by assessing the current state of data migration onto the new M&E/AMOS platform at Malaysia Airlines. “The data was analyzed through an automated validation process to flag any major potential gaps and issues that would need to be solved during the project,” Vermeij said. “The final result paved a concrete way forward to achieve the project’s ambitious timelines. Malaysia Airlines appreciated this analysis and contracted EXSYN to implement this new data migration approach to accelerate the project while guaranteeing the quality of airworthiness data.”
To make this happen, EXSYN joined up with a local team of Malaysian Airlines employees and trained them on its data migration methodologies and NEXUS tooling (which manages data related to aircraft airworthiness critical processes). “We established direct connections to all source systems (databases) and/or created standardized inputs based on reports, which fed into the library of pre-built components that EXSYN made based on our long experience with different M&E systems,” said Vermeij. “This approach enabled Malaysian Airlines to catch up quickly with NEXUS and empowered them to tackle different heavy engineering topics, such as modifications data, autonomously. EXSYN also coordinated the data migration process, providing expert support on both project management and deep technical levels while taking on some of the data migration tasks directly to ensure timely completion.”
EXSYN used a phased approach to ensure that the Malaysia Airlines’ M&E/AMOS project went smoothly as possible. For example, “we first created an early baseline data load to make the initial plan and expectations from data mapping tangible and provide a reference point for progression,” Vermeij said. “After that, we focused on getting all the static data in good shape, which defined all maintenance and airworthiness requirements of the fleet and supporting services. This phase typically required a few iterations. Then, we shifted focus to the dynamic data of the fleet, such as last done/next due date, aircraft configurations, and stock levels. From there onwards, the aim in terms of data validation moved towards getting an accurate maintenance forecast and fleet status.”
Eight months after EXSYN had signed onto the project, Malaysia Airlines achieved the M&E/AMOS goals that they were seeking. Better yet, “we were able to accelerate the project while ensuring the quality of airworthiness data, enabling the airline to achieve significant efficiency gains in their engineering and maintenance operations,” said Vermeij.
“To get a project like this through the gate successfully, full commitment on all levels in the organization is required,” he added. “Then you must staff the project with motivated people who are also empowered to make individual decisions for their expertise. Only with such a team and mindset are meeting timelines like these remotely possible.”
Ramco Brings Iraqi Airways into the Digital Age
Iraqi Airways is the national carrier of Iraq, headquartered on the grounds of Baghdad International Airport. It is the second oldest airline in the Middle East, having commenced service on January 29, 1946, using five De Havilland Dragon Rapides 6-8 passenger biplanes. “Currently Iraqi Airways holds 31 aircraft with 11 different fleet types,” said Peer Mohideen, associate director of Ramco Aviation Software (www.ramco.com).
Mohideen knows the specifics of Iraqi Airways’ fleet because of the role Ramco has played in deploying its MRO ERP system at this airline. Before Ramco came in to help, Iraqi Airways was using printed paper reports and Excel spreadsheets to manage their asset tracking, component and compliance, maintenance, and planning programs. As well, “all regulatory reports were prepared manually,” he said.
The operational and safety problems associated with this antiquated approach were so serious, that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) banned Iraqi Airways from operating in European airspace in 2015. This is why this airline turned to Ramco for an M&E ERP solution to help reverse the ban. “The key reason for Iraqi Airways to adopt a maintenance application like ours was to eliminate the hazard of releasing an unairworthy aircraft into service, due to inaccurate data and to get regulatory approvals,” said Mohideen. “Along with the customer, we did micro-level planning, identifying the risks in its existing approach to the maintenance program and developing a mitigation plan. This really helped prepare the way for a smooth and successful implementation.”
Peer Mohideen, Ramco Aviation Software
Now that Ramco’s MRO ERP solution is in place, Iraqi Airways’ productivity has been increased in their Stores and Procurement Department, where all parts movements are now being tracked and maintained in the system. The airline’s maintenance planners can also plan ahead for scheduled tasks and stock/assign these tasks accordingly.
In fact, Iraqi Airways’s end-to-end aircraft maintenance process has been completely digitized, Mohideen said, improving its accuracy and levels of compliance while reducing workloads and task completion times. The Ramco solution also provides the airline’s management with the accurate data they need to make better and more timely decisions.
Although Iraqi Airways has yet to win EASA approval to resume flights over Europe, its implementation of Ramco’s MRO ERP solution is a major step towards this goal. And the airline is happy with the results.
“Ramco is one of the respectable and approved companies of many international airlines, and it has brought about a great and good change in the Iraqi Airways company,” said a quote from Iraqi Airways provided by Ramco for this article. “As for their system, it is a good, understandable and very useful system, especially for maintenance activities in our company. As for the work team, they are qualified, experienced and very cooperative people. They are a very good team.”
Swiss Aviation Software Integrating Air Algérie’s MRO Data
Air Algérie is another national flag carrier; as its name suggests, for the north African nation of Algeria. While this article was being written, the airline’s MRO database was being migrated from a legacy IT management system and associated software programs, to the single AMOS platform made by Swiss Aviation Software (Swiss-AS).
“AMOS offers a wide variety of data import solutions to make the replacement of legacy software safe and easy,” said Remo Suter, who leads Swiss-AS’ data integration solutions team. He performed this interview together with Alexander Belykh, who is responsible for the hands-on data migration into AMOS. “These options integrate seamlessly with state-of-the-art ETL (extract transform load) software, which allows smooth data processing.”
According to Suter, Air Algérie has four main reasons for moving to AMOS. First, “their previous product does not have a very large customer base anymore and development seems to have come to a standstill,” he said. “A second reason is the higher level of integration offered by AMOS: it covers more business processes than the legacy solution did. This means that AMOS can replace the legacy MRO system plus many additional solutions. Third, the legacy solution was mainly dependent on a complex mainframe IT architecture that was difficult to maintain. Finally, integration options with third party solutions and ERP systems were not as easy to execute as they are with AMOS.”
Iraqi Airways
In migrating Air Algérie’s MRO data to AMOS, Swiss-AS were careful to spot and remedy erroneous, redundant, and obsolete information from the airline’s database. “Very often data quality in legacy systems is affected by a high amount of pollution, which has accumulated over the years,” he said. “Therefore, every data migration project is also a good opportunity for data cleansing!”
Swiss-AS also made an effort to coordinate the migration with the airline throughout the process. “Mapping the data properly requires input from the business’ end users, in order to prepare the target system to function as they expected,” said Suter. “It is important to involve all departments in the data mapping workshops,” he added. “Sometimes gaps in legacy systems are filled with additional stand-alone solutions. If customers don’t mention them in the beginning, it can cause some extra work during the project.”
Today, Swiss-AS is in the final stage of the Air Algérie switchover to AMOS. It’s going well: “Data quality in AMOS was high in the last migration iteration we performed and we are confident that the rehearsal and cut-over will be smooth,” Suter said. “However, the last two months in every project are always quite hectic; everyone is preparing for changed processes and a different view on the company’s data.”
Remo Suter closes this article with useful advice for any airline planning to move to a new MRO IT solution. “The higher the data quality is at source, the easier it is to migrate into a new system,” he said. “Make sure you use the opportunity to clean data during the migration process; the user experience on the new system will be a lot better!”
Aircraft maintenance software solutions provider TRAX has announced that Justin Daugherty joined the company as senior director of sales and marketing. TRAX is expanding its current sales team and welcomes Daugherty’s expertise in sales, business development and marketing functions. Daugherty joins TRAX from Ultramain Systems Incorporated where he ran the project management organization, successfully implementing existing and new customer projects as well as supporting business development activities. Prior to that, Justin played a pivotal role as the deputy director of maintenance at Virgin Galactic in the starting up of the spaceline maintenance organization.
Daugherty holds an airframe and Powerplant License with Inspection Authorization and is a Private Pilot. He began his aviation maintenance career working in business aviation at an FB and advanced from there to various positions of responsibility for maintenance and operations at deployed CONUS and OCONUS locations for General Atomic Aeronautical Systems Incorporated.
With experience in aviation operations, project management, and business development, Daugherty brings a wealth of knowledge to further strengthen TAX’s position in the industry. “We are excited about Justin joining the TRAX leadership team,” said Jose Almeida, TRAX’s president and CEO. “His deep experience in aviation will enable him to help build on our comprehensive strategy and position the company for future growth.
Rusada’s aircraft maintenance software ENVISION has been certified by SAP as integrated with cloud solutions from SAP.
The certification allows organizations using SAP S/4HANA to interface with ENVISION more easily, and pass data between the two systems using tested and certified integrations.
Through using the ENVISION Integrator, Rusada says their customers can now create input and output interfaces for SAP systems without additional programming, using standard APIs available on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
“Our certification with SAP enables us to significantly reduce the effort required to integrate with their cloud solutions” said Neil Hargreaves, chief operating officer at Rusada. “The creation of integrations is a key step in many ENVISION implementations, so anything we can do to speed-up this process results in time and resources saved for our customers.”
The SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) has certified that the integration software for ENVISION 2301, integrates with SAP S/4HANA from SAP using standard integration technologies, or that run as an add-on to a cloud solution from SAP.
Pegasus Airlines is moving its document authoring process and compliance management with Comply365’s end-to-end authoring and distribution platform, including its mobile app.
Comply365 announced that Pegasus will use ProAuthor to author and manage its Airbus, Boeing and company manuals across all its departments to support its ambitious growth plan that builds on the 129 destinations it flies to in 48 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa.
Pegasus needed a secure, enterprise solution to standardize the authoring and management of their manuals to enable departments to work seamlessly with automated workflows.
“Safety and compliance are essential to our operations, and we needed a proven, aviation-grade solution to ensure consistency and up-to-date information across all the content that we distribute to our crews,” Pegasus CEO Güliz Öztürk said.
“The Comply365 solution will bring an agile, streamlined approach to our processes with a more efficient system, that is able to support our growth plans and evolving needs. We are happy to partner with Comply365, as it not only brings an innovative solution, but a dedicated team focused on helping us maximize the value of the product, in areas that matter to us the most,” Öztürk said.
Pegasus is among the airlines that is recovering capacity the fastest since the pandemic, as the number of passengers on its international routes grew by over 96 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year. With new aircraft planned for delivery, the airline aims to increase its total capacity this year by about 20 percent with plans to exceed 100 aircraft.
As Pegasus onboards new aircraft, ProAuthor will enable faster, more routine manual revisions and help the airline remain audit ready. Comply365’s mobile app will automate compliance tracking for the airline’s 6,000 users and equip frontline employees with electronic forms to send data to the operations staff, to enable data-driven decisions.
“It’s a pleasure to welcome Pegasus to the Comply365 Community, as they reinforce our growing presence in the region,” Comply365 CEO Tom Samuel said. “We look forward to supporting their growth and enhancing the safety and efficiency across their operation.”
Pegasus marks the second Turkish carrier to turn to Comply365. They join more than 90 global customers relying on Comply365’s operational content and compliance management platform, from start-up airlines to the world’s largest carriers, as well as cargo, business, Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), flight training and rail operations.
Raytheon Technologies’ Collins Aerospace business is partnering with American Airlines to bring the latest in aircraft data management technology to improve the airline’s safety, reliability and analytics.
American is installing the Collins InteliSight Aircraft Interface Device (AID) on more than 500 aircraft, including its entire Boeing 737NG fleet and the majority of its Airbus A320s, with plans to install the device on its Boeing 777 fleet.
“Key to running a dependable airline is having a reliable and healthy fleet. And at American, data drives the operational decisions we make. Having the right intel in the hands of our Technical Operations team quickly means we can provide the predictable and solid operation our customers are counting on,” said Stacy Morrissey, American’s vice president of Technical Operations – Engineering and Quality. “With Collins InteliSight AID and GlobalConnect ground platform, American can provide our team members the tools they need to create a more reliable travel experience for our customers.”
The Collins Aerospace InteliSight AID captures, records, stores, encrypts, and securely sends aircraft data to Collins’ robust and secure ground platform, GlobalConnect. Providing an automatic offload of the data after each flight ensures the information is immediately available to the airline for safety analysis and implementing improvements. American’s Technical Operations team will save precious time no longer having to manually retrieve aircraft information. Benefitting from near real-time access gives American added power to keep its fleet running safely and on time.
“Collins worked closely with American to implement a data-driven solution to save time and increase the operational efficiency of its fleet,” said Jennifer Schopfer, president of Connected Aviation Solutions at Collins Aerospace. “The InteliSight data, passed via GlobalConnect, will give American the information it needs to ensure even more predictable, reliable travel for the multitude of flights it manages every day.”
Once the thousands of data parameters generated by the aircraft reach the ground, they are distributed to multiple endpoints: Safety can conduct a safety review, engineers can review for reliability and use the information to help troubleshoot upcoming maintenance points, and an analytics team can use the data in predictive models to make the fleet more efficient and environmentally sustainable. American installed the InteliSight AID on more than 200 aircraft in six months, capturing, securing, and offloading data from more than 100,000 flights. American has seen its data capture rate increase from 85% to more than 99%.
American is currently performing the installation of the Collins AID at seven American Airlines locations.
Aeroji announces the product launch of their innovative engine aftermarket platform and welcomes all professionals and companies to join.
Aeroji has announced that they have successfully completed the Beta phase of their engine market module and has now launched their platform for aircraft engine trading and professional networking starting Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Based on valuable user feedback, the platform was significantly improved and developed during the initial phase. Over 150 companies have registered with Aeroji and contributed to a great user experience, including key players and decision makers from major aviation companies as well as from small and medium-sized enterprises, airlines, lessors and MROs.
“Aeroji was born out of a difficult time for the aviation industry. As the pandemic crisis showed the importance of digital solutions for our business, we decided to take action and develop a new service that will help airlines, lessors, MROs and all other aftermarket players. We are grateful to our early users for their feedback and we are excited to present our simple and easy-to-use service to the aviation world. As the recovery from the crisis took some time, we had extended the Beta until now to support our customers. And our service will continue supporting the industry in the challenging times ahead as the aviation industry ramps up,” says Dimitri Martel, co-founder and managing director of Aeroji.
The recent development with several new features concentrated on the area of engine remarketing workflows to help asset sellers control the marketing channels and gain insights as well as provide sales teams tools to manage portfolios. With the continuous focus on user experience, the team optimized the design of the interfaces and the functionalities, leaving no feature behind, is it for desktop users or mobile devices.
“Having a core team with deep aviation expertise gives us the ability to develop the service with a genuine passion and a deep understanding of our customer needs and challenges,“ said Semih Dinc, Co-Founder and CXO of Aeroji.
Aeroji continues the development to make the engine procurement process even more satisfying, easy and fast. Growing the network and offering more opportunities for connected companies is one of the future focus points.
Black Widow Helicopters has announced an order for 12 shipsets of GPMS International’s Foresight MX, the industry’s most advanced health and usage monitoring system (HUMS). In addition, every UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft delivered through Black Widow’s leading digital modernization program will be standard equipped with Foresight MX. With the agreement, Black Widow Helicopters also becomes a GPMS Certified Installer, providing a premier installation option for the growing number of Black Hawk operators around the world.
“We selected Foresight MX to provide operators the best HUMS experience possible to monitor their Black Hawks” said Alex Freidin, vice president of commercial and flight operations of Black Widow Helicopters. “Foresight reduces operating costs by monitoring aircraft and engine vibrations and identifies trending components with an easy-to-understand user interface. With Foresight’s advanced analytics and predictive Remaining Useful Life capability for trending components, operators are able to mitigate unscheduled and AOG events, resulting in lower operating costs and increased aircraft availability.”
According to Todd Powers, vice president of sales for GPMS, Foresight MX goes beyond HUMS. “In addition to the predictive HUMS, Black Widow UH-60 clients benefit from Foresight’s touchless cellular data uploads, flight data monitoring (FDM), exceedance monitoring, automated power assurance checks, and “one move” rotor track and balance capability. At just over 17 lbs. installed, operators benefit from our award-winning, lightweight, integrated, and future-proof technology versus typical federated and heavy legacy systems from multiple solutions and vendors. We’re proud and honored to be on Black Widow Helicopters UH-60A and soon on their UH-60L Black Hawks.
Freidin continues, “HUMS is a key part of the United States Forest Service roadmap and it’s included in their MATOC requirement for a “modern helicopter.” We’re focused on delivering state-of-the-art Black Hawks to our clients with full-width, touch-screen glass cockpits for a superior pilot experience, and with Foresight MX HUMS as standard equipment, an exceptional experience for the maintenance and operations teams. It gives our clients the competitive advantage in an ever-increasing UH-60 Black Hawk market and more importantly, aside from the commercial and economic benefit, a massive safety enhancement.”
Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik are enhancing their collaboration on Lufthansa Technik’s digital platform AVIATAR to improve the customer experience in aviation analytics. Honeywell Connected Maintenance analytics are now being fully integrated into AVIATAR’s Predictive Health Analytics (PHA) suite, which will grow to more than 100 Predictors for multiple Airbus and Boeing aircraft types. Airline customers will benefit from AVIATAR’s unique interfaces to airline data, processes, maintenance and engineering systems, allowing a fleetwide management of multiple aircraft types.
Building on the long-standing relationship between Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik, this new long-term agreement is beneficial for aircraft operators on the journey to digital technical operations (tech ops). Airlines can take advantage of an integrated single product offering designed to help reduce maintenance costs, technical delays and cancellations in airline operations. AVIATAR’s integrated data analytics capabilities, enriched with Honeywell Predictors, are part of a seamless digital product portfolio for airline tech ops.
“Together with Honeywell we are enhancing the digital excellence of AVIATAR,” said Nikolaus Koerner, senior director commercial tech ops solutions, integrating world-class analytics in one true nose-to-tail product offering across many different ATA chapters and aircraft types. Airlines will benefit from a consistent user experience and access to the full range of analytics along with connections to the wide portfolio of solutions provided by our Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem, including AMOS and flydocs.”
“The collaboration between Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik combines decades of experience with aircraft maintenance and digital transformation,” said Karen Miller, general manager, Honeywell Connected Aerospace. “The resulting predictive analytics solution is designed to help airlines increase the availability of their aircraft and reduce costs associated with operations, flight delays, and cancellations.”
Lufthansa Technik says AVIATAR’s modular, open and neutral architecture has been developed to seamlessly interface to various IT systems operated by airlines and MROs around the world, a prerequisite for collaboration in aviation. The integration into AVIATAR’s suite of digital Tech Ops solutions allows customers, for example, to take advantage of MRO Management interfaces, automation, and digitally enhanced MRO services.
TUI Airline has selected AVIATAR, Lufthansa Technik’s digital platform for its Boeing aircraft health management requirements. TUI’s five airlines from the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are using AVIATAR’s Condition Monitoring application to manage its fleet of around 130 aircraft. TUI’s decision was made following a project for proof-of-concept to foster system alignment across its maintenance operations, which has proven the advantages of AVIATAR solutions for TUI Airline.
Focusing on technical operations (tech ops), AVIATAR digital solutions for Boeing 787, 737-800 & 737-8 aircraft enable TUI’s MOC (Maintenance Operations Control) engineers to monitor and predict the technical condition of the airline’s fleet. Building on latest technology and customer centric developments, the new partnership allows TUI and AVIATAR to deliver future-proof solutions. The MOC called “Maintrol” at TUI is located at their UK & I headquarters at Luton Airport.
“Working closely and hands-on with our engineering and maintenance teams, the AVIATAR team supported the transition from the previous system. They have been able to facilitate the transition by providing a straightforward and dynamic system for in-service defect troubleshooting. With the AVIATAR team’s continued cooperation on how to tailor and adapt the Interfaces to TUI’s evolving system landscape, we have built a strong and trusted relationship in just a few months,” said Niklas Kropp, project manager E&M, Transformation & Change, TUI Airline. “With AVIATAR we are able to enter a future-proof, innovative relationship characterized with short, agile development cycles and providing our people access to state-of-the-art digital technology.”
“The professionalism of TUI Airline’s international team was very impressive and the foundation for the successful proof-of-concept. It is an honor for AVIATAR to work with such a cross-functional team bringing great dedication and unique expertise into the partnership”, said Frank Martens, Senior Director Sales and Customer Development, Digital Fleet Services, Lufthansa Technik AG. “But the best is yet to come: Our journey has just begun, and we will continue to grow our future capabilities for Boeing aircraft together. Taking TUI Airline’s demand for digitizing its engineering and maintenance operations, our newly founded Digital Tech Ops Ecosystem will pave the way for such digital innovations.”
